


The Orpheus Crucible

by Nikoshinigami



Series: The Unlikely Death [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2020-06-23 17:37:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 67,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19706218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nikoshinigami/pseuds/Nikoshinigami
Summary: No one knows where Simulants come from and those who have asked have had better things to do than pursue the answer when faced with extermination. With war still a present concern and Jim Moriarty's involvement left uncertain outside of its threat, the crew of the Black Manta may have taken on much more than they presumed to.And among the many mysteries left to face them in their voyage lies the answer to the question that has been posed since the very beginning: who killed Sherlock Holmes?





	1. Chapter 1

John's heart had relocated from its safe cradle of arching bone to lodge itself at the base of his throat, pummeling against his esophagus like a frightened creature trembling in the dark. Each breath he took squeezed itself around the obstruction, pain lighting up his vision in trails of perception up his sides with a sharp embrace around his chest. It hurt. It hurt like an electric shock as even each exhale rasped against his soft pallet with the wheeze of another breath. It felt like cold fire and tasted like ash. And it was, above all things, _glorious_.

He barely felt his feet anymore. He could hear the heavy thump and feel the numb bang as his boots slammed down in quick succession over another walkway suspended above another mineshaft. The clouds of exhaust in the low-oxygen conditions spread out like a thick mist that seemed more readily available than air to fill his lungs as he raced around corners and barreled his way towards an exit fit for escape. He hadn't lost them yet. Every glance spared over his shoulder showed the brightly colored security detail in quick pursuit, their oxygen masks strapped tight to their faces and protective eye gear slightly fogged over as they too ran above the vents that helped cool the machinery deep down below. Probably wasn't the healthiest thing to be breathing in all things considered but it was the act of being unmasked in the first place that had given them both away. It had honestly stopped being at all surprising when private security acted in the interests of their corporate employers with force.

"This makes, what, the sixth mining station we've been chased out of?" the mechanical device floating beside him asked--rhetorically, of course; Sherlock knew full well that John wasn't about to waste the little oxygen he drew in to engage in conversation. Except it wasn't six--it was five. John refused to count Rhea and Sherlock was only counting it now to be annoying. Never a missed opportunity for that. John rolled his eyes as he slid under a railing and dropped to the platform beneath them, finding feeling in his ankles at least as they creaked against the drop.

"I did tell you it wasn't going to work," Sherlock said, the propulsion unit having no trouble at all keeping up with John's movements though it remained unmasked in the cloak of the hologram as they moved, nothing more than its own basic, physical shape. "While I applaud your continuing efforts at subterfuge, eventually you're going to have to admit that you're just not very good at it."

John cast him a glare as he ducked under scaffolding, trying to convince himself he wasn't hearing blaster fire coming in from behind as the thunder of footsteps seemed to grow.

Sherlock hummed loudly, the metal unit hovering near John's head. "According to the schematics, you need to climb back up another flight and then follow the blue wiring in the overhead railing towards the abandoned mineshaft we dropped in through. Next available point of ascension is about half a kilometer to the right and is an open-access ladder from which you will be observed and shot at." Rather than worried, the voice sounded bored, edging on almost disinterest until it piqued gently with a query. "Vatican Cameo?" he asked.

John nodded, keeping low as his leg muscles cramped and protested to their hastened flight. Upon the next turn in the catwalk, rather than look to climb, John dropped down once more to the walkway below and pressed himself against the wall, eyes returning up to the path above where he could observe himself continuing in his escape without his pursuers ever questioning their prey. It was a convincing trick, nothing a quick scan months back couldn't achieve to add further mischief to their arsenal, and if it weren't for the brimming grin that seemed foreign on his borrowed face, Sherlock Holmes would have made a rather convincing John Watson as he continued the race like a relay partner, leading the security guards away from the genuine John as the rush to capture the corporate spy continued on ahead.

Breathing deep, John let himself relax for a moment as the reverberations of footsteps maintained their metallic clang through the air, his eyes following his ex-pursuers as they left the catwalks vacant in their wake. There still wasn't enough oxygen in the air to fill his lungs but slow, even inhales were still miles better than the short, painful gasps he'd managed at full tilt. There wasn't a single sign of either Sherlock or the guards by the time John shifted his full weight back onto his feet and made slow, careful progress to the access ladder the hologram had described.

Another bust mission.

Sherlock was surely right, though. Moriarty's use of the mining ship Endeavor 1 wasn't likely to be his first foray into the world of moon mining. Everything had worked too smoothly in his favor--even if he had been thwarted in the end. Their own success was a fluke best forgotten. Moriarty had been the one in control since the very start and only sheer luck and happenstance had given them a favorable result. It spoke of knowledge and confidence which were both most easily acquired through intimate acquaintance. Moriarty had connections with the corporations working in the mining industry on some level surely. Which made it a shame, really, that every single installation they'd visited had not only refused to cooperate with any form of formal investigation but immediately jumped to conclusions of sabotage or spying when confronted with their less than legal attempts to circumvent the silence of the corporate veil. Funny, that. It kept them on their toes, though. Seven months into their joint assignment and there still wasn't a dull moment to be had. Just by existing Sherlock seemed to ensure constant danger and surprise. Best year of John's life to be honest. Even half limping and still struggling to catch his breath, John couldn't picture a place he'd rather be than in the thick of it once again with Sherlock driving them both forward on suspicion and a hunch.

The ladder was just as Sherlock had assured him, and accounting for the dive he'd taken down a further level, John rose up two floors before dismounting the cold, rusty bars. The blue wiring the hologram had mentioned was just as easily found and followed, steps kept slow and quiet to make this final approach towards safety the lesser of his flights. The loud rumble of machinery kept him from listening in for some hint towards Sherlock's return, the nearly silent motor hard to hear even in quiet. The ambient roar kept his escape masked as well, though, and was more savior than saboteur. Still, he preferred to know where the dead man was rather than keep to blind faith that he would return before the access hatch was engaged.

John needn't have worried. Standing beside the hatch, putting on airs of boredom that could not overshadow the pleased peak in the corner of his lips, leaned Sherlock Holmes in all his holographic glory, John's replicated stature replaced with his own natural appearance as he waited patiently at their exit with arms crossed over his chest. "Oh, good. Still alive," he said, righting himself to stand out of the way.

John nodded, still remiss to speak as muscles continued to complain and lungs still ached. It wasn't hard to imagine how he'd given his pursuers the slip and made his way there so quickly. The security detail were looking for a man, not a diamond-shaped propulsion unit that felt no fatigue and could fly past overhead without arousing undue attention. Lucky bastard. John put both hands to the heavy wheel that held the locks in place over the exit hatch and put his weight into wrenching it open. Alarms rang out immediately with red lights to accompany their song.

"The Black Manta is standing by on swoop pattern. We drew too much attention for a pick-up."

John rolled his eyes slightly, doubting very much that either of them were honestly all that surprised to be in that particular situation again, moon after moon. With the door nearly open he put his hand out, not waiting except for the pause his movements made with less leverage against the wheel. Into his palm fell Sherlock's metal casing, propulsion and projection both forgotten as he laid instead in the palm of his hand. Fingers closing in around the delicate frame, John brought it to his lips and kissed its warm exterior before the final rung of metal slipped from the lock's holster and the door blew open with the pressure differential, sucking them out into the mineshaft outside. It was probably quite the sight with stars above and metal scaffolding outlining the perimeter of the vacant cylinder no longer fitted with its laser drill. Probably. John kept his eyes closed and bit his lips into a tight seal as he waited in the quiet of mutual trust for rescue or, forgoing that, death. Constance and the rest of the crew had never let him down yet--though in fairness it would only take this once.

There wasn't enough gravity to pull them down towards the moon's surface but the initial blast from the breach put them in a spin. Death would come from hitting the opposite wall of the mine shaft unless the residual gravity from the constructed base around them pulled their trajectory down towards the crater below. It wasn't the vacuum of space but it was still far from pleasant as John's jaw ached and stomach protested against the spin. He could hear the grinding of metal and the screams of exhaust but more than anything he felt the chill that foretold rather imminent death.

"Incoming," Sherlock warned and John held on to him more tightly, ducking his head to protect his own neck and the space reserved near his heart where his hands held on to the hologram unit for safe keeping.

Then there was pain.

Long before sound there was the surprise of pain that forced John's eyes open wide, mouth locked shut only through an act of will made stronger by the frost collecting on his stubbled chin. The webbing bit into him at every junction, bruises promised though bones held out against the deceleration net into which he'd been thrown against. His breath was lost without even a cough clogging the works of his throat. There was nothing but bright pain and a suffocating mass against his chest that was little more than his own weight having come to a complete and jarring stop.

"Captain?" a woman called, ducking her head down to his level on the other side of the netting. Her green eyes narrowed with a pout, blonde brows pinching above long lashes. "You know, if I didn't know better, I'd think you preferred it when things go a bit wrong," she said as the large doors to the cargo hold closed loudly behind them. She pinched a button against her jacket lapel, speaking down into the clasp. "That's three for three, Constance. Not bad."

"The word you're looking for is ' _perfect_ ', Imogen," Constance corrected over the slight static of wireless communication. "Lestrade's on his way down. So long as no one's mobilized, we'll be out of here without so much as the ghost of turbulence. Hold tight just in case."

"Copy that," Imogen replied, fingers leaving their pinch along the button transceiver. She smiled a bit brighter as John heaved himself up against the netting. "Well, Captain. Welcome back."

John nodded dumbly, finding his breath once more against a heave of discomfort; one first and gloriously deep, long breath filling his lungs to capacity and leaving him on a long sigh. His fingers unfurled painfully from around the hologram shell that sat safely in the palm of his hand as he rested his weight on one elbow caught in the crook of the net. "Good to be back," he said, as the engines around them ran hot and the Black Manta took her turn in the race out of Jupiter Mining Corps' Ganymede installation.


	2. Chapter 2

John scowled slightly behind the oxygen mask held firmly to his face as he watched Michael, the hologram technician, fiddle with Sherlock's settings. Blurry, static, improper white balance--he seemed to run the gambit of fixes and screw-ups as he motioned dials and keyed in figures with down-turned lips expressing his own displeasure. The red-headed man had a habit of muttering under his breath with a display of vulgar vocabulary that was both impressive and alarming. It certainly added variety to the quiet hum of engines and the wheeze of troubled breath. John was pretty sure he'd been called a ' _scrotum tossing rectum weasel_ ' in one of his half-whispered tirades on abuse of technology, followed in a closely by ' _wart sucking, fuck-ass queef whore_. Charming man. A real winner. Greatest pioneer in hologram mechanics, Commissioner Holmes had said. John wouldn't have been at all unhappy for them to have gotten the second best all things considered. Especially if second best happened to be a mute.

Michael looked over at John, mouth set firm as he waved a screwdriver across at him. "You kissed his reflectors again, didn't you?" he accused, Sherlock's propulsion unit in his hand with fingers interrupting Sherlock's unfocused projection. He didn't wait for a response, eyes returning to their task with tool prodding into unseen crannies. "Of course you did. You never listen. You have any idea how the electrolytes in sweat can corrode and destroy sensitive sensor arrays? Think butterfly wings, John. Remember the butterfly wings thing?"

"Right. Butterflies." John took the oxygen mask off his face, his nose wrinkling as the condensation urged him to rub and scratch at the skin around his nose and mouth. He all but rolled his eyes as he sat up from his seat in the corner of the technical bay, oxygen tank propped up beside him having been rolled in from the medical room next door. "Next time we jump out of a pressure gate into a mid-atmo free-fall, I'll remember to bring a net," he said, not holding back on even the slightest hint of snark with his ego to defend. "I was _holding_ him for safe keeping."

"You were shorting out his circuitry and destroying his reflector array with your sweaty palms," Michael returned, not at all swayed by necessity.

Sherlock wasn't exactly the help in John's corner that he could have been. He shrugged his shoulders, mostly keeping his attention on what Michael was fiddling with though he managed a warning scowl in John's direction upon seeing his mask removed. 

Lestrade had it pressed against his face before John even had the chance to look betrayed. "I'd say the captain came out no better for it all, Mike," the security officer said, the consummate voice of reason whether or not one was wanted. "He's still six for six in quick escapes."

"Guess I should be grateful he didn't run a repeat of Rhea."

"Why does everyone insist on counting Rhea?" John asked, mask removed to speak regardless of the harsh looks from all sides. He all but threw up his arms in defeat as he went to his own, tired defense. "In and out; no alarm pulled. You can't count the ones that went okay."

Michael's left brow rose. " _Okay?_ Someone triggered an electromagnetic field and we lost Sherlock's primary projection unit. Had to restore and run him off the ship's backup systems until we could get the replacement chassis functional. I'd say having to abort the mission due to a near technical catastrophe qualifies for a four letter word but it sure as hell isn't 'okay'." 

"Not my fault," John insisted. "Rhea doesn't count." He sat back in his chair and pressed the mask back to his face before anyone else came up to do it for him, not in the least interested in being lectured on his own health in tandem to the bitching he had to deal with in regards to Sherlock's. If there was one thing he cared about without hesitation it was Sherlock's well being. Being accused of negligence and abuse wasn't exactly his favorite part of their return.

And it was part of it. Every. Single. Time. John was relatively sure there wasn't one thing he did that their technician approved of when it came to his interactions with Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock was a computer program, after all--not alive. Michael was, in fact, the only crew member allowed to treat Sherlock like a hologram instead of as just another human on board. To his credit, though, it was because the man treated machines better than he did people. They were his _babies_ and he was their _daddy_ and more than once such coddling over Sherlock's circuitry had sparked more than just a power short. It was stupid to be jealous or threatened by the technician but John hadn't the patience to try not to be. Michael made for a fantastic target for all his impotent rage anyway and the vulgar man never disappointed in his ability to come to the party with fuel and his own source of fire.

Not that there was much room for a firefight, figuratively or not. With the central bank of processors making up for a large cylindrical tower in the center of the room with a ringed outcropping around it functioning as a cluttered desk, there was only enough room for a single body to walk around the technical bay. Special venting apparatuses for filtering heat into the vacuum of space made the walls a mess of cables and ports but the Commissioner had promised him it was supposed to look like this--that this was the absolute height of technological advancement. John had to sit more of less in the doorway in a chair pulled over from the lounge just outside. It wasn't built for observation but they had just performed another scoop retrieval. John wanted to see that Sherlock's projector was okay. And judging by the reproachful glares, Sherlock wanted to know John was alright too.

John breathed deep from oxygen mask, tasting the moist, metallic tint. He was going to end up high but he half figured that's what Lestrade wanted him to be. High had a better chance of blanket approval.

"I guess that's it for Ganymede," the security officer said, leaning in the doorway with arms crossed over his chest. "Already stopped off at Callisto before this. So is it 'Goodbye, Jupiter Mining Corp.'?"

John shrugged, the plastic mask fogging with his breath. "Probably. Need to take some time before we head back in at any rate. Might do to head to the rim station to see about any information or gossip we can get. Moriarty's probably got a million aliases but someone is bound to know who he is."

Lestrade nodded slowly, his expression dull. "I suppose so. We're not exactly operating on the greatest amount of information."

"We have plenty of information," Sherlock corrected him, his voice filtering out through the ship's speakers. "What we lack are leads." He walked away from Michael, his projection picked up by the ship's interior reflectors while the technician fiddled with his propulsion unit at his desk. It made for a very smooth hologram but gave a rather two-dimensional appearance; like talking to a man standing behind a pane of glass. He moved closer until he stood at John's side. "There's plenty of evidence to suggest Moriarty's affluence above and beyond his likely influence with the Milky Way Mining Corporation at the very least. Not that Jupiter or Galaxy Mining seem to be entirely on the up-and-up. We can't rule out Moriarty working for any of the others in staging the sort of corporate sabotage these people seem to think we're interested in; taking money to destroy the Endeavor over issues arising from lost bidding wars for moon outposts or whatever else these people fight over. Mining being the only real industry outside exploration and the military, Moriarty must be out here somewhere. The only other option is fading into obscurity in fear of retaliation and nothing about his modus operandi makes that likely. He's still operating out here; still getting paid one way or another. It's just a matter of tracking him down through the odd jobs before he breaks into something big again."

Lestrade's face pinched into a scowl, his brows laying low over his cool eyes. "What about the Simulant angle? I still think we should be looking a little closer at the military side of things. Not the actual armed forces but the government contractors who get paid to furnish the military with the ships and weaponry needed to keep up the war efforts."

"Yes, because we've proven our efficiency in stealth and subterfuge time and time again in these exercises against simple mining outposts. I imagine spying on government contractors would be a cakewalk in comparison." Sherlock rolled his eyes, all but pointing to John as an example of why they really didn't need to be breaking into armament facilities. Thanks. 

"Or we could try and do things using legal channels," Lestrade insisted, hands up immediately to defend against more. "Heresy, I know, but I think it worth mentioning. Again."

Sherlock's expression turned dark with a acrid smile. "And how _is_ my dear brother, Lestrade?"

The grey-haired security officer didn't so much as flinch. "Apparently he's developing an ulcer, or at least I think he is considering the looks he gives me every time I submit a progress report," he said, continuing to hold his ground.

"He knew what he was getting when he assigned us to the task. So did you when you volunteered to come along."

"I'm not complaining. Believe me, I know better than to doubt either of you two. Just saying we've spent over half a year now investigating mining outposts. Might be worth it to investigate other possibilities as well."

"Anyone else want some?" John offered, holding up his oxygen mask to see if perhaps either of the arguing men felt inclined to relax for a moment. Rehashing the same old arguments did get old after a while--except when he and Michael did it. Then it was sport.

Lestrade took the mask from John's hand but rather than enjoy some less than sterile sharesies, he turned the nozzle on the oxygen tube off and set the mask to hang from its hooked perch. He sighed heavily, eyes remaining on the medical equipment far longer than they needed. "It's your ship," he said, shoulders falling slightly with defeat. "I just think we're doing the world a disservice by not doing everything we can to get the bastard."

"We are doing everything we can," Sherlock assured him. 

Less than content but wise enough to retreat, Lestrade nodded shortly and left the technical bay, his footsteps echoing down the hall towards the cargo hold.

They weren't doing everything they could. They could investigate government contractors. They could do more than submit reports over-viewing cooperate corruption and broken legalities. Seven months and nothing. There was every reason to expand their scope; every sane, practical reason they could be doing more. But then it would be over. And where was the adventure in that?

"You know, I hear there's been some activity near Delphi," Michael said, apparently having tuned in to more than just the unit in his palm.

Sherlock shrugged. "Of course there is. There always is. It's the only outpost in the asteroid rim that operates a policed, navigable corridor into the inner planetary sanctum. What Simulant wouldn't want to kamikaze into that?" 

"And an outpost like that has every reason to be of interest to Moriarty," John added, standing up slowly from his chair. His head was light but his feet still felt heavy. The fact Sherlock didn't demand he take his seat said he must at least look better. "I'm going to go let Constance know to plot our course. Probably need to refuel anyway. And it will make Greg happier to get on the beat."

Sherlock hummed with agreement, giving John a quick once over before walking back over to his technician who oh so lovingly tinkered with every miniscule reflector panel on what more or less counted for his body. John tucked the green devil of jealousy deeper in and let them be with a few short, dizzy steps.

"Found lip prints," Michael called, his voice tinged in annoyance. "I _knew_ you'd been kissing it again."

John turned his middle finger to him and left with a small, proud smirk.


	3. Chapter 3

There were few things more difficult than watching a battle from afar without the intent to join. Of wanting John had plenty, and desire was at full, but intention required much more than just the clenching, gut imperative that drove him in almost every facet of life. The Black Manta, while outfitted in plenty of defensive weaponry, was not a front-line vessel. It lacked the bulk to muscle its way through enemy lines and was built especially for avoiding attack through quick escapes with most shield power diverted aft. Theirs wasn't a mission to dive in and destroy but to avoid and wait things out from the side. They were designated cowards and branded thus with their mission parameters. And even as they watched the battle blooming in bursts of orange and gold from the main screen in the cockpit, even as John's stomach tightened in impotent anticipation, the Black Manta slowed to stop far from the battle ahead where junk ships and military cruisers plowed through one another and made brilliant sparks against the starry sky. Another battle; another Simulant altercation. Another chance to witness carnage with only the option to wait. John clenched his hands at his sides as he kept his eyes focused on the stage before them, looking for his choice in actors among the nameless vessels in play. Well, they wouldn't be getting to Delphi through the normal route, it seemed. No one would be. And, like every time before, there was nothing more to do than watch and wait.

Constance kicked her feet up on the console, hands weaving behind her head as she sat back in similarly resigned repose. "I spy with my little eye something that begins with 'S'," she said, voice dull though her words were playful.

John frowned slightly, hands fidgeting at his sides. "I thought we'd disqualified the letter 'S'."

"Only because it's too common. Space, ships, stars, Simulants. Savagery." She sighed loudly, tongue ticking against her soft pallet as she stared out into the endless night that erupted in colors like those that burst behind closed, rubbed eyes. "You know, it's almost beautiful if you can forget people are dying with every flash."

"It still is if it's the right people," John heard himself say. His fist clenched once more then fell slack to either side as he took a seat at one of the three control panels and made himself at least somewhat useful. Delphi wasn't impossible to reach by other routes but navigating an ever-changing asteroid belt was still not the preferred method of travel for any non-military vessel. Not only was there the threat of collusion to contend with but often unsavory sorts took refuge in the larger rocks and guarded their unmarked territory with murderous intent. It was always preferable to take the guarded passage at which Delphi stood as sentinel. Forgoing that possibility, though, there were only so many other options left available for a ship low on fuel after running hot in hastened escape.

Constance sighed again--growing bored it seemed. "We've only got enough fuel to either get our asses to Delphi or turn back and try our luck on one of the Jupiter moons," she said, sitting up to dial in a few items on her dash. "I don't think any of the moons are going to welcome us with anything short of hostility so shall I key us in for the dangerous trip that at least will have the fun of surprise?"

Dangerous? John smirked slightly. He wouldn't exactly call piloting through an asteroid belt the height of danger but it was at least the least stupid of their options. "Just try and keep a wide berth when it comes to any of the magnetic rocks," he said. "Ganymede already did a number on Sherlock and we don't need the Black Manta coming down with her own set of technical problems." He stood back up, giving the console a pat, before heading back towards the short corridor that lead out to the common room. He paused just inside the entry, hand grasping lightly at the corner support. "Oh. Real quick. What letter would you use to describe spying the ace of the open-hatch swoop maneuver?"

Smirk splayed out in a crooked display, Constance shrugged her shoulders with feigned ignorance and gave her captain a wink. "Probably an 'S'. It's always an 'S'," she reminded him.

John nodded slowly, his thanks implied, and Constance's grin all the assurance needed that she read him loud and clear. He left her to her course corrections and continued on his way, pleased to note that the tremors in his hand had seemed to go unnoticed. They were becoming common enough that perhaps, less appealing, people noticed but simply didn't say anything. They reminded him of a weakness he'd never learned to deal with, though--perhaps better phrased as an addiction he had never really chosen to combat. He would give anything to rejoin the battle. Some days were easier than others to simply turn around and run but even with the adrenalin from their escape still a recent memory, John's hands trembled with a want for more. It was a feeling he knew all too well. It was the same feeling as loving Sherlock Holmes.

He'd never meant to, and even when it had become a conscious thing he'd been more than aware of the personal stupidity involved. Altruism wasn't his strongest virtue. Just loving Sherlock wasn't enough--he was a man of action, a man of _passion_. And they couldn't. Nothing. And Sherlock shot down every option to explore. There would be no android or robotic bodies, no mindless surrogate for John to touch with Sherlock's consciousness loaded in. John understood why but many a desperate night had him furious at the man he loved for being dead and nothing more than light. Sherlock was just another battlefield to view from afar, bright colors of a flashing display that would always be too far away to engage. John could dream of Sherlock like he dreamed of war but either way it always ended with the day.

Prey was only fun to hunt when the target was there to be caught.

He should have gone to bed. His body was sore from being pushed so hard in their escape and there was no better cure for assorted aches and pains than rest and ample time. Instead John found himself walking back through the common rooms to the medical and tech bays where he could still hear Michael tinkering away with his usual array of complaints. John stayed away from the doorway, preferring to lurk out of sight as inconspicuously as possible, back to the wall and arms crossed over his chest as though he'd simply come to rest instead of having positioned himself to overhear.

"Ganymede is no place for a hologram," Michael was saying, the sound of his tinkering adding ambiance to the scene John constructed in his mind. The ridiculous techy was probably still at his seat, microscopic glasses strapped to his head to do the fiddly work that so often came with repairing the sensitive circuitry on Sherlock's projector.

"Nothing's irreparable," was Sherlock's flippant, logical reply. 

Michael's annoyance didn't need a visible expression to convey itself in all its intricacies through the opaque walls of the corridor. "You and the captain both need to stop using that as a metric for success. I know you're going crazy but I wonder about him sometimes too."

"I've never known John to be traditionally sane. You can trust him if that's what you're worried about, though. Certainly more than you can me."

John clenched his fingers around his forearms to still the tremble that returned to their grasp.

"You seem to be holding it together rather well. Especially for someone as old as you are. I mean, holograms aren't meant to last six months let alone a year."

"No," Sherlock agreed in understated simplicity. "We're not."

"You just say the word and I'll wipe your hard drive," Michael offered--and not for the first time in John's memory. 

Sherlock's reply was not in the least bit defensive considering murder as the mercy being offered. "The day I can't take it anymore, I doubt I'll be cognizant enough to make any such request. Just listen to John when the day comes," he said. Not if-- _when_ ; something unspoken between John and him but obviously not between him and his technician. They didn't talk about things like that. Not about impermanence. Not about the end. It would get in the way of the fun to inject even more of their tragic reality into the lives they lived day by day. They both knew. What good were words when so often they became nothing more than empty promises to try and keep some hope alive.

No option to engage. Just sit. Just watch. Just wait.

"We could just restore you to the original copy; revert you back to the blueprint model."

"The day you do that is the day I cease to be a person in my own right. And while we may disagree on that fact, even you have to concede that it's pointless in the long run to continually reformat a temporary AI."

The hum in the air said Michael did indeed agree, the spark from one of his tools illuminating the open doorway. "Think you've got another year left in you?" he asked.

There was silence, and then at its uncomfortable conclusion a simple and inelegant "No."

"Well, fingers crossed you don't pick an inopportune moment to lose it."

"I know exactly what my end will be like and considering it _will_ be my end, I think I'm allowed to be selfish in saying it will most certainly be at the most inopportune time and I don't care in the least how appalling that will be for the rest of you," Sherlock all but spat, the resignation of his words mismatched with the anger in his tone. "I've been close to it before," he said, "and I know it won't come in the form of laughing apathy but in that of shrieking, furious futility. And you will race yourselves to turn me off. And even John will know better than to ever turn me back on."

John clenched his fists, cursing a military manicure for robbing him of the sensation of nails digging into his palm. He pushed away from the wall and turned back towards the dormitories. In so many ways, he was better off asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

John tasted copper in his mouth as his head jerked violently to the side, cheek scraping against his back teeth with the sudden impact of a fist. He stumbled backward, stunned but still caught in a panic as his heart raced as though he were back in pursuit again, his body cold with sweat and breath seething through a tight jaw. It took a second for his eyes to focus and even longer for his mind to follow. The panic in the interim was far too familiar. There were other people there but their voices were muffled through the ringing in his ears. They weren't speaking, though--they were shouting. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. And John couldn't remember getting out of his bed or why there was a gun in his hand being wrenched furiously from his grasp by Lestrade.

"Don't you ever--!"

"You want me to just let him wave the fucking thing around?!" the security officer yelled back at the equally irate Sherlock. 

John let him take the gun and concentrated on deep breaths, his face growing red in shame more than impact as the ship lurched with the sound of a sudden bang, curses echoing down from the cockpit ahead.

"Imogen, I need you on gunner!" Constance ordered, her voice carrying back out to the mob surrounding their captain. The petite blonde mechanic was barreling out towards the designated console before John had even recognized her face.

The ship lurched and John braced himself against the wall as the lights flickered overhead. Lestrade cursed again, shoving the gun into his own waistband as he leaned in tight towards Sherlock. "Get him out of here," he ordered, barely hesitating before following in Imogen's footsteps towards the busy cockpit ahead.

Sherlock's irritation was palpable but at least, unlike with the others, it didn't seem to be directed at him. "Let's go," he said, his voice immediately calmer in speaking to John, his face letting go of resentments to present a kindness John really didn't want to face though it rolled through him as a comfort regardless.

"We're under attack," John murmured, grasping for memories that would link up the time between being asleep and being struck in the main corridor. "I'm the captain. I should be up front."

Sherlock shook his head, leading the way towards the mess hall with slow, purposeful steps. "You can't help them right now, John. Come with me. You need to sit down."

Numbly, John slowly followed with one hand braced against the wall for support. His legs felt so weak they barely held his weight with each heavy step into the limited dining area and kitchen. He all but fell into his seat at the long table, shaking limbs causing him to hold back a self-deprecating laugh as another wave of chills froze him.

Sherlock was already cursing once again as he hurried down the hall. "Michael! Bring a blanket! John's going into shock!" he yelled, followed by a few choice words he'd undoubtedly picked up from the other. He paced close to John, unable to do anything other than stand by and watch. "I told them not to touch you. I _told_ them," he repeated, hovering in nervous concern while Michael's hurried steps finally joined them in the room. The red-haired technician quickly covered John in the blanket he'd grabbed from the med bay, head and shoulders embraced in a thick, orange cloth that felt as pointless as it did necessary. He was a doctor, after all. He knew exactly what was going on. And he hated it with every breath in his body.

Involuntary recurrent memory. 'Episodes' they liked to call them. Flashbacks. Generally harmless and temporary if left to run their course but potentially life-threatening if interrupted by force. John tried to concentrate on breathing and let the technical side of his mind take over in diagnosis and treatment while the unconscious mind still screamed in the corners of his psyche. Under attack but not at war; not an army captain but a ship's captain. It was well over a year ago now. He wasn't back on those derelicts with legions of the dead. He wasn't a soldier anymore--for better and for worse.

"We're being pursued by an unidentified vessel," Sherlock spoke, carefully and evenly as though afraid to trigger a recurrence. "We're not certain if it's a rogue Simulant ship or just some run-of-the-mill bandit but either way, our response is the same. Constance is trying to lose them in the asteroids but we have taken some hits. Everything is being handled, though. Everyone knows what they're doing."

John nodded, concentrating still on slow and even breaths. He could put the pieces together from there. This wasn't the first time this has happened after all. 

The first time it had been as harmless as a bulb dying overhead with a flicker and a snap. His landlord called the police and his psychiatrist completed his diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. The second time it was due to an enthusiastic round of applause. Medication didn't help. For the most part, being back in space did. Being useful, being busy kept his mind in the present time. It was worse when he was depressed. In that respect, it shouldn't have really come as a great surprise.

Sherlock sat across from him at the table, his expression closed off through his eyes maintained their calm concern as they stared into John's without pity. "Where were you?" he asked, curiosity coloring his words and adding context to the vague query. The ship shook with another booming sound that echoed deep within the halls.

John gripped the blanket in his clammy fist, smiling though there was nothing humorous about it. "The Persian Cyrus," he said, pleased by the strength of his voice. Beyond that, he didn't feel much at all like explaining.

Sherlock nodded slowly, his eyes never wavering in their unblinking stare. "You came out of your room with a gun and started checking all the rooms. Every time you found someone, you ordered them at gunpoint to get out into the corridor until you had just about everyone lined up like a reverse firing squad. Lestrade was worried you'd start shooting. But you kept telling us we had to stay together. Kept asking where Murry was. You didn't do anything wrong. You just scared a few people."

John smiled slightly and let his head hang, grateful for his cocoon of warmth in its added comfort of concealment.

Another heavy crash against their hull set the lights flickering again, this time causing Sherlock's projection to fizzle with static as well. He looked down at his hands where interrupted data failed to complete his form. Micheal was off running back to his post without more than a slightly panicked expression spared them. Sherlock remained the epitome of calm even as shouts from the cockpit rang out in alarm.

"I should have had him get you some tea," he said, looking out at the empty kettle with a frown as it slipped from is counter perch with a bang.

John winced at the sound but nodded along. Yes, a proper cuppa would have been nice indeed. 

He wondered what that said about them. Ship battling off an unknown assailant, navigating an asteroid field, electronics failing, and there they were thinking about tea. Nothing good, he supposed. John watched the static over Sherlock's projection with vague faith in the ship's backup system's ability to archive him should the main system short out and an unhappy certainty in regards to to the calm he displayed at his own malfunction. He wasn't just being calm for John's sake. Of all the men John had ever met, Sherlock was perhaps the lowest on the rungs that stood as marker for inhabiting a good bedside manner. Sherlock's general idea of sympathetic care was complete avoidance until the issue resolved itself at which point he could return and be the focus of attention again. In fairness, John hadn't seen that man in months, though. There were glimpses in the height of danger--moments like now but somehow still lacking--where Sherlock took his post with ego inflated to rule over everyone with his superior mind. So long as they listened. If they ignored him, there was nothing he could do. Like Lestrade hauling off and punching John out of a flashback despite Sherlock's warnings against it. Sherlock was only capable of doing things that people permitted him to. He couldn't get a blanket or even make a cup of tea. His demeanor was as much in line with his own dejected feelings as it was in consideration for John's own mental state.

There was a time, not so long ago, that they lived like they were masters of the galaxy. Sometimes they still were. But not right now.

John put his hand out across the table, laying it palm up in invitation though the gesture was symbolic more than anything. It made Sherlock smirk, though, as he laid his own disrupted hand over top, the illusion of their holding hands less convincing as his body flickered in error. But it was still real--as real as it would ever be, though they both knew it could be more.

John rested his other hand under his chin, keeping his balance as the ship rolled hard to starboard. "I heard you and Michael. About your termination," he said, almost a whisper under the thunder of Lestrade's voice ordering Imogen to fire on the asteroids instead of on the other ship.

Sherlock shrugged, looking off towards the cockpit. "It's nothing you didn't know already."

No, it wasn't. None of the coming conversation was comprised of words never before heard or uttered. It was all rehashed from former pleas and talks towards understanding. But Sherlock hadn't given up back then and it terrified John to think the man in front of him now had done just that. He wasn't the least bit concerned that the ship was losing its ability to broadcast his signal. The man across from him looked too much like someone waiting on the inevitable. John had enough on his mind not to suffer silently that heartbreak.

"I know you said no before but maybe there have been some advancements in--"

"No, John," Sherlock interrupted, his voice firm as his jaw seemed to clench. The question was so old it no longer needed speaking though its insistence still seemed to strike a nerve.

"You'd have hands."

"I'd be a machine."

"You might last longer."

"I would gain nothing, John, but a retired sense of uselessness," he snapped, irritation pushing past the fog of indifference at the very least. He mimed a deep breath, his hand clenching in his would-be grasp of John's hand, the fingers disappearing through the cold of John's clammy flesh. He scowled. "I don't want to know how an android perceives its world or what it would do to me to understand touch or taste as a metric. I would rather be myself until the end than become something else. And I'm sorry. But for you, the hardest part is the fact that I'll leave you behind. For me, it's accepting that in all honesty, I don't want to take you with me. I don't want you to die and to know what this is like. I don't want to spend eternity on the same hard drive just so we're together. I want you to let go, not find more ways to hold on."

John nodded, his lips turning up on a sly smile. "Eternity on a hard drive?" he asked, forehead wrinkled with amusement as he ignored the harder parts to hear.

The hologram all but rolled his eyes. "Don't try and make it romantic. I said I _didn't_ want to."

"No, but you're the one who thought of it."

Sherlock looked away, his face pinching with the effort not to smile, cheeks turning a sallow color as his projection continued with its flawed presentation. He slid his gaze back towards John as another rough turn shoved him hard against the table. "What on Earth am I supposed to do with you, John Watson?"

"Stay," John stated simply. It was both the most and the least he could ask for.

Sherlock sighed again, his smile soft. "This isn't the end of me. Soon as the others take care of that rogue vessel, Michael will start back on my repairs. Then onwards to Delphi and who knows where after that. We have to find Moriarty, don't we?"

"Seek and destroy," John confirmed, and from the cockpit there came a roar of cheers that said their mission was much akin to their current achievements. He could hear the engines winding down as overhead lights regained their strength. Even Sherlock's hologram looked marginally better as power returned to normal operating systems with combat protocols disengaged.

Sherlock stood up from his seat, moving instead to stand beside John as soon there would be an audience ready to report back to their captain. "Believe me, I want to be there for that," he said, ghosting in close to his blanket draped shoulder. "I'm not in a hurry, John. I'm just being realistic."

John nodded though part of him still refused to digest the words that had been spoken. It could wait. For now it was time to put on a brave face for his crew and try to restore some of their faith in him after the occurrence in the corridor before. It was time to let the future slide and let concerns focus on the present.

As Michael walked in from aft, Sherlock turned to him with a grin. "Kettle's on the floor," he said. "Best get it ready."

Groaning, the hired hands of the hologram slunk over to the kitchen corner and retrieved the spouted pot.


	5. Chapter 5

John tightened his arm around the pillow beside him with lazy eyes held closed and pink-hued under the calming light emanating there. He liked mornings like these--few and far between as they were. He liked how the heat of his own body made the pillow warm at his side, and how the present light let him know he wasn't alone in much the same way as the smell of another body or the sound of another's breath. Usually, there was the soft whirring of a nearly silent motor to cue into like a heartbeat but it was broken still with too many other things needing to be repaired. Instead, it was the ship that cast Sherlock's projection into the bed with him, his body overlaying the pillow to complete the illusion of something solid laying there. With his own eyes open he would be able to see his arm wrapping around the other man's thin torso and feel it as though it were there. It was all an illusion; just a trick to calm and appease the senses. And it was beautiful to fall asleep to. It was wonderful by which to awaken.

Slowly letting his eyes peek open, squinting against the soft cast of light the hologram diffused, John could not help the thin smile on his face as he saw Sherlock laying there with his own eyes closed like the consummate actor he was. Never a half-arsed job done; always the best for John. He knew perfectly well by now that John was awake but the fantasy didn't include a sleepless partner and what better way to maintain the dream than pretend to sleep while the other awoke. It was up to John to decide when Sherlock could stop pretending with time given to him freely to indulge in this way the simple pleasures of companionship. They'd long left aside the pretense of reading to excuse their joint presence in bed without lengthy explanations required as to why it was wanted or enjoyed. It was stupid to be in love--pointless and absurd. But if they didn't say it, it couldn't hurt them, and if they didn't question the motive of things, they needn't be seen as a futile gesture to bridge the divide between the worlds of the living and the dead.

John stroked the pillow along its side, eyes following the contour of Sherlock's body to press the firm cushion into its pattern and allow his hands and eyes to duplicate the sensation of soft folds running under the sensitive pads of his fingers, cloth soft like an old, worn shirt. And Sherlock shifted in his sleep, proximity sensors telling him where he and the physical world intersected, his motions in mimicry and nearly perfect in every way: the lengthening of his neck as he stretched, the small of his back bowing in as he pressed closer to John, inviting him to pull him closer and bury his face in the pale column of his throat that John imagined would have smelled of light perspiration and the lingering sweetness of an expensive cologne. John squeezed the pillow in close, eyes closing as he bent to frame the imaginary body, licking the skin of his own hand to taste what he imagined Sherlock's throat to taste of. He tasted nothing, though; his own skin lingering with nothing bitter, nor sweet, nor sour. All that he'd managed was a damp patch along the back of his hand. Sighing, John let the pillow ease from his grasp and his eyes roll open once more. This time, following his lead, Sherlock's own eyes were watching him half-lidded and sleep-fogged, the frosted chill of his ice-blue eyes warmed with affection clearly shown. John longed to cup that jaw and lean in to kiss those pouted lips. But that was forever impossible. John always woke up with heartache after a night of make-believe.

"You slept well," Sherlock told him, stretching out again as he changed position, rolling over onto his back with arms crossed at his belly. The pillow rose up out of him, its position turned the wrong way. John fixed it absently as he maintained his arm around him, cursory strokes a part of habit as he felt along the pillow's case.

"Not having a fit isn't the same as not having nightmares."

Sherlock shrugged, a small smile on his face. "You think I don't know the difference between peaceful sleep and deep sleep?" he asked, adding a hint of derision their game. "I know for a fact you dreamed of nothing but darkness; simple, black, endless dark to sooth an overstimulated mind."

John scrunched his forehead as he leaned in closer. "And if I told you I dreamed of white, sandy beaches and cocktails for two?"

"I'd know you were lying. You always hold the pillow closer when you do," Sherlock said, the smarmy wink he gave akin to a quick morning kiss as he rose up and gave John equal reason to do the same. Without motioning or speaking, he turned on the room's interior lights as he opened the door to the closet. His integration with the Black Manta could have been much more extensive to the point of the ship being an extension of his consciousness. But Sherlock had refused on all counts but two: he wanted to open doors and be able to turn on lights. Most of the time he still mimed the motions necessary to the tasks--his own small fantasy. John loved the way his hands moved in near perfect synchronicity with the retraction of a doorway or illumination of a room. It was the small things--always the small things--that kept the waking nightmares at bay.

John sat up, scratching at his left armpit and across his chest as well. Static from their night's embrace had left his skin tight and uncomfortable under the clingy film of his well-worn nightshirt. John pulled it off and threw it aside, feeling the hair on his head and arms crackle and stand up on ends. Worth it. Nothing a quick rinse wouldn't fix. John stood up and made his way to the sink to give himself a quick whore's bath while Sherlock stood aside and watched.

"The engines are on standby," he reported, never one to simply draw the conclusion without pointing out the evidence. "My projection quality is greatly improved from last night which likely means I'm running on aux and the lack of ambient vibration is further indicative of their not currently operating. Only reason to turn them off is to make repairs and as it would be suicide to do so in the middle of an asteroid field, I believe we've made it safely to Delphi."

John put his hand against the wall, feeling for the faint tremor of the engines. It was quiet under his palm, however; just as Sherlock had said. John nodded and rubbed at the stubble on his chin as he continued to see to his appearance. "Imogen said she'd need parts. Time to open up the Commissioner's coffers, probably. Let me know if you need anything and I'll make sure we pick it up."

Sherlock opened his mouth to reply but closed it quickly mid-thought, his brows narrowing with irritation. "Right. Of course," he said with bitterness coloring his tone. He was being projected by the Black Manta herself, not relayed through a projection unit. He wouldn't be able to leave the ship until Michael had completed the repairs. That meant staying behind instead of investigating. His expression said it all.

"We won't leave until you've had a chance to look around," John promised, chin tilted up as he ran a razor down his jaw, shaving away the rough new layer of greying hairs that, while dashingly rugged, aged him more than he cared to admit. "Michael's got a head start on Imogen seeing as the transceiver issue wasn't due to the attack last night. Soon as he's got the other systems up, you'll be out there deducing all the dirty secrets you can spy while we have a pint at the seedier bars. This is _your_ element, Sherlock. No one's going to forget you back here and expect to get anywhere with this assignment."

Sherlock's small smile was something at least, though his brows still hung low over his sharp eyes. "Upscale bars, John. Moriarty doesn't deal with trifle and even the stupidest career criminals are smart enough not to say his name whereas those who might be looking to do business aren't quite as shy. Money breeds a misguided sense of invincibility for those looking to try less legal means of attaining their desires."

"Rethinking Lestrade's idea then?" John asked.

Sherlock shrugged, turning his back towards the wall with hands on his hips. "While I agree there is an element of war that follows Moriarty, I don't think it's his main objective. That isn't to say he's not involved in any conspiracy to prolong the war efforts for seedy government contractors but it's not an avenue the people before us haven't investigated. It's _obvious_ , John. Since when has Moriarty shown himself to be so straightforward and unoriginal?"

"You always want things to be clever," John warned, wiping the excess cream from his face with the damp towel he'd used for his impromptu bath. "Even you have to admit we were more lucky than right last time we went up against his plot."

Scowl returned, Sherlock rolled his eyes and pushed away from the wall, pacing towards the door to the corridor. "Luck didn't save half a million lives, John. _I_ did," he corrected. And, always one to make as dramatic an exit as possible, he motioned for the door to slide open and took off down the ship's halls with proud steps and a somewhat haughty chin raised.

John chuckled and hurried to throw on a clean shirt, eager to learn the status of his ship and get down to getting her working again.

It was a blessing to have had such a soft and easy morning with so much wrong to contend with for the rest of the day. Commissioner Holmes might argue a new ship would be more cost efficient as Imogen ran off the list of parts and supplies she'd need to get the Black Manta running again at full capacity. 

"And, of course, some spares just in case," she said, her recitation of the list items on the pad in her hand finally at an end as she stood alongside John and Lestrade at the edge of the main ship entrance. She swept the blond flyaways from her ponytail behind her ears as the whoosh of air from the service landing bay at Delphi swept up their ramp to greet them through the opening door.

John rubbed at the back of his neck. "As long as it's necessary, you won't have me pulling too hard at the purse strings. Greg, on the other hand--"

"--thinks we should hail the Proteus since they're more than capable of doing the repairs themselves at half the cost of resources and time," Lestrade practically quoted, though his heavy sigh at least showed signs of resignation. He shook his head as he marched down the ramp, the landing bay covered in a sprinkling of similarly sized ships all parked and resting inside the large hanger that boasted all the necessary amenities and a healthy smattering of bright advertisements holographically projected in the air. Lestrade hung back to let John lead at the base of the ramp, his disapproving frown tempered with age. "With current contention at the Delphi corridor's mouth, though, I understand why it might be best we handle this on our own and any report I submit back to the commissioner will include such reasoning towards the added expenses."

Imogen's smile grew, her hand coming up to pat against the firm muscle of Lestrade's right tricep. "You're the best," she said, not in the least bit hiding her pleasure in being allowed to keep the Black Manta under her sole maintenance. 

John tisked beside them. "And I thought I was the best."

"You're the best when you're not going crazy," Lestrade returned.

There really wasn't a playful response to that. Lestrade was still not entirely over what had happened during the dogfight. John couldn't honestly blame him, much as his pride urged him to. 

Imogen was the one who flinched, though--not John. John could remember vaguely the look of fear in her face before she'd turned away from him and hurried off to do her job in the fog of the night's progression. Much as he wanted to just forget it and leave it to the past, it was his job now to meet things head-on. Social things. Team things. Personal things. 

"Greg, you want to get us checked in while Imogen and I get started on the shops?" John asked, trying to slip some authoritative tone into a more-or-less basic request.

Lestrade looked back at the two of them and nodded, lips pursing slightly with unspoken approval as he seemed to understand why his presence wasn't quite needed for now. "Sure. I've got plenty to cover the docking fees. Meet back at the usual?"

John nodded. "I'll buy the first round."

The security officer required no further excuses. He tipped his head in compliance and kept his heading towards the hanger authority while John motioned for Imogen to follow him to where the bright lights and loud noises rang out in testament to the bustling commerce within the station's heart. It was a home away from home in most ways with the shops themselves as familiar as the faces that they passed. Everyone who was anyone stopped in Delphi at least once in their mad space adventures. It was a comforting sort of chaos as they shouldered their way towards the parts and tools shops through the throngs of space mariners looking for a reprieve from their lonely travels amidst the materialistic goods and foreign faces. John all but took hold of Imogen's wrist to pull her along, life with a hologram more than suitable in teaching him to lead without force and relying on others to follow. Busy as it was, Imogen had no problem keeping up, her short stature allowing her to duck and weave through the wake that John left in his bullying stride. Soon enough they were far from the bottleneck that was the main hanger entrance to stand side by side and take to the crowded halls without further issue. Now the lack of conversation wasn't an act of patience due to the noise of the crowd but a steadily growing awkwardness that passed second by second for the worse. John hardly had time to clear his throat, though, before his mechanic jumped right to the point.

"You're a real captain, right? Not just a ship's captain but an army one?"

John looked down at her, trying to find his way to words that made sense in the context she'd chosen to set. "That's right," he said. "Invalided out of service. In a few years time they may think better of that and call the lot of us back who're still able to fight. For now, captain's just a title, like doctor. Don't bother thinking of it as a rank. I'm not in the service anymore."

Imogen nodded, walking with her hands clasped behind her back in an unconscious adoption of John's own militant stride. "Right. Except... sometimes. Sometimes you think you are," she surmised, doing what seemed to be her best to work around questions and instead impose conclusions to whatever bits of information that had been whispered since his episode.

If it were that easy to explain, John had to figure he'd have been over it all by now. It was never as simple as being in one place or another, of his mind blinking in and out of a time period lost but unforgotten. That sort of thing didn't scare him. Few things could or ever did. What really scared him was the mindset that pulled him back and held on to him with both fists clenched with every descent into that distant world. 

"You know those moments in your life when you realize beyond a shadow of a doubt who you really are?" John asked, not sure that she did but less sure how else to describe it. "Not all of us realize we're good people," he explained. "Some of us come away from that sort of clarity realizing we are the monster's in the closet and that hide under the bed. And it takes a special kind of monster to be okay with that."

"Wouldn't that just make you a good person, then?" she asked, her eyes glancing up at him when the intermittent crowds allowed her eyes to wander from ahead.

John shrugged his shoulders, lips thin and grim. "Better than those who revel in it, but I wouldn't say I'm especially good. I've no interest in being a jackass to genuinely good people but you wouldn't like to hear the sorts of things I'd like to do to the rest of the monsters in the world." He licked his lips, swallowing on the lump that was his inarticulate shortcomings. "What I'm trying to say, and what I'm doing a real shit job of explaining, is that you don't have to be afraid of me. I will never hurt you. If anything like that happens again, just try and stay away. The places I go are the places where I spent my time as a doctor, and while I'd still prefer you to be wary, just.. understand that everything will be okay."

Imogen nodded, walking just the little bit closer without need supplied by advancing groups. "It must have been hard," she sympathized, smart enough at least to not offer much more in the way of platitudes. 

"Sometimes I wish it had been harder. Eventually, you just stop caring. I got out before I had the chance to reach that point."

"I'm glad," she said, offering the softest of smiles.

John huffed with humor and held open the door to Oracle Parts and Supplies. "And that's what makes you a good person."

With a shy smile she walked ahead of him into the shop and allowed him to leave their conversation behind. It was better than leaving it unsaid--better than going on and on about it as though anything someone could say would fix it. They had an understanding now and that was enough. And after a pint or two, hopefully Lestrade would let go of his grudging resentment as well. They both knew full well he knew John's medical history in as much as it had pertained to his trial and sentencing aboard the long lost Endeavor 1. He was scared and angry--perhaps even at himself a bit--but hardly surprised. Sherlock would no doubt take care of Michael and John would have been surprised if not to hear that Lestrade and Constance had taken time out from a game of I Spy to talk about their crazy captain and the worst possible timing of his crazy-ass shit. So that was it as far as he was concerned; over and done with. His crew knew and that would be the end of it ever after. Captain John Watson was released on his own recognizance for the best or his own tired detriment.

Imogen seemed quick enough to forget it all for now in favor of perusing scrap and factory parts alike. John really didn't give a toss about either. So long as the Black Manta took to the stars again with full capabilities reinstated, he was happy. They'd need the engines at full power to outrun further moon skirmishes, need their shields fully operations to escape more tough scrapes, and only with optimal power restored could it all function and still be enough to run Sherlock's complicated hologram system with all its minute relays.

Speaking of a certain curly haired hologram, John couldn't fail to notice Sherlock's surprising addition to the corridor outside the shop, his bored expression betraying nothing in regards to his own thoughts on the halls of commerce. The propulsion unit was fixed then. Better for everyone all around. John checked over his shoulder to make sure Imogen was still busy before slipping back out of the shop, pushing past a few small clusters of shoppers as he hurried forward to collect his friend.

"Sherlock!" John called as he drew in close and the other man's eyes still had not settled on him. Almost immediately after, one of the many idiots wandering with their eyes on the billboards rather than ahead all but plowed into John, his feet intercepting his own till he stumbled forward in an attempt not to crash to the ground. He crashed into a person instead, their body lean and strangely familiar.

"Careful," the man said, hands to John's shoulders as he steadied him, his voice a deep, honey-dipped baritone.

John's eyes flew wide as he looked up into the all too familiar face of Sherlock Holmes whose hands were warm and whose eyes changed from blue to grey and whom carried on his person the lingering sweetness of an expensive cologne.


	6. Chapter 6

If John was dreaming, he did not care to wake up. It had never felt this real before or been so full of sensory detail. Sight, smell, sound--god, if it weren't for the crowds of people walking around them, John would have loved to have given him a taste. Would he taste as good as he smelled? His throat, his face, his lips? It was Sherlock-- _unmistakeably Sherlock_. And the fact that it was impossible for that to be true was only a secondary concern to all other facets of him being right there.

Because he _was right there_. Simple buttoned, black suit tailored within an inch of his frame, soft, bouncy curls, even the same neck-bending height to which John stared up at on regular intervals. There wasn't a detail with which John was unfamiliar save the newly archived sensation of his large hands grasping him by the shoulders as he saved himself from being bowled over and John from the further furry of a tumble. "Sorry," John mumbled over stunned lips, speaking automatically as his brain faltered over the newly blurred boundaries of reality.

Sherlock's smirk was obviously faked, the tight expression almost as painful to observe as it seemed to be to create. "No harm done," the living man said, and eased his hands away from John now that his feet were once more under him. Then he turned to walk away.

John grabbed his wrist and held it hard, a million warning lights firing off in his head. "Wait!" he shouted, amazed at how easily his own fist encircled the delicate wrist under the starched, black cuff.

The other man stopped and looked down at his captured arm with undisguised contempt before looking back at John, his muscles tense beneath John's grip. There was no recognition in those piercing eyes. It was as if they'd never met before.

"I...," John swallowed hard, feeling his body tense and burn while simultaneously melting with a chill. "Sorry, I... you.. you look like someone I know. Is your name--are you Sherlock Holmes?"

The left brow on Sherlock's unique face arched as he relaxed just slightly in John's tenuous grasp. "It was you calling my name. Funny, I don't remember you. Where should I know you from?"

John hid heartache behind a mask of stunned surprise, his eyes unable to blink least the specter before him vanish as further evidence to his decline. "Endeavor 1," he said, trying not to sound like a desperate man speaking to a patient with amnesia.

Sherlock's head tipped back slightly, chin raised with a jolt. "Oh! I was rather sure I hadn't made much of an impression there. Though it seems I underestimated the potential for the expedition. A Simulant Trojan Horse, was it? Much more exciting than cleaning hose pipes," he mused, his utter detachment from events mounting evidence against all of John's lingering hopes and clouding suspicions that were newly formed. He pursed his lips as though thinking briefly, his eyes scanning John with notable interest. "You don't look like a third technician, though. Security? No, definitely military but too loose to still be career. Doctor, then, judging by the callouses on your hand which I would appreciate you removing. You'll crease my cuff."

John released him immediately, though his hand maintained the 'c' of captivity around the empty air where his wrist had been. "Sorry," he said, licking his dry lips. "So you... you'd gotten off the ship?"

"Mm. Here at Delphi, actually. Been hitchhiking around ever since. Far less dull than holding down an actual job." Sherlock fluffed the cuff of his suit jacket back into order before returning his stare towards John, his eyes transforming into a calculating amber-grey from green as they continued to drill down into him like a miner's polished tools. His pouted lips were the sole touch of softness to his features and John couldn't help but stare as every mannerism proved itself to be reminiscent of _him_. Even the sharp intake of air before launching into a dismissive statement was the same as John had observed before. "Let me explain, however," he began, "that while I am flattered that you took such an interest in me, I have no interest in dating or casual sex. So whatever fantasies you've created about me since the initial point of your infatuation would be best concluded."

John felt his tongue swell in his mouth as indignity stained his neck red. "What? No. I mean..."--it wasn't important; it could wait--"You've been on Delphi this whole time?"

"Of course not. This is just my main hub for continuing exploration. Most ships that don't mind an extra body--whether they know I'm there or not--come through here. I was on another one of those Endeavor class ships just a few weeks ago, in fact. Smelled faintly of cabbage," he said, his nose wrinkling deeply with distaste. "You wouldn't believe the new security measures in place. Barely made it out without detection. Getting to Deimos should prove much easier. Sundry transport ships are far less restrictive these days."

"Don't you know what this means?" John asked, though everything about Sherlock screamed he hadn't a clue. He was a man John had met but not the man he'd grown to know. Sherlock was the selfish, unrepentant arsehole from long, long ago. He hadn't a clue what he'd put everyone through. His innocent stare said he'd never thought to care. "Everyone thinks you're dead!" he almost shouted, bringing his voice down in light of the crowds but finding several heads turning towards them all the same.

Sherlock practically laughed, hands slipping into his trouser pockets as he shifted on his feet. "Nonsense. It wasn't called the Virgin Battle for PR purposes only. No casualties. Why assume anyone had died let alone myself?"

He didn't know. None of it. He'd been long gone before anything had happened. Sherlock literally had no idea of the things that had transpired, of the part that he had somehow played, how any of the events of the last year had affected thousands of people because the media never cared to credit machines regardless of their importance in events. Sherlock Holmes, alive and well, and more ignorant than ever before.

John shook his head, not even knowing where to begin to start. ' _Hello, I'm Dr. John Watson and I got put away for your murder_ '? ' _Hi there. I'm John. I'm your best friend_ '? No. How did one even begin to introduce themself to someone they knew intimately? This was his closest mate except... not. Not at all. But it was his hair that caught the blue lights from the billboards on the crest of every curl, his eyes that churned like pools of changing colors, his warm skin that had been impossibly soft under his fingertips. 

"John?"

John turned his head to look away, spying Lestrade as the older man pushed his way through the crowd towards them. He'd never been so happy to see the security officer in his life. He'd know what to do--he'd corroborate the tale. If it was both of them, then Sherlock might listen. With both of them, he stood a chance.

Maybe. 

He'd never know.

He'd only looked away for a second but it seemed more than enough time for Sherlock to slip away, disappearing into the crowds of commuters all milling about between the shops. John spun where he stood, looking for some evidence of bouncing dark curls to point him out and lead John in the pursuit of the elusive detective in the flesh. There was nothing. Like the ghost John feared him to be, Sherlock Holmes had simply vanished.

Lestrade's mouth was open to speak as he ended his approach but John was faster and far more determined. "Did you see him?" he asked, hating the desperation in his tone but finding his current anxiety little more than fuel for it.

"See who?"

"Sherlock!" he shouted, no longer caring to keep his voice down.

Lestrade made a face, his expression not entirely friendly. "Yeah, I saw him. His transceiver still on the brink or something?"

John shook his head. "No, it wasn't that Sherlock; he's a different one! A _living_ one!" he specified, still straining to track him down. "I touched him, Greg. I swear to god, I felt his wrist in my hand and he grabbed me when I got knocked into him. It was him, Greg! It was Sherlock!"

"John, that's impossible," the security officer argued.

"No, it's _improbable_! If it was impossible then he couldn't have been here and _he was_! You saw him too!"

Lestrade put his arm to John's shoulder, holding him back from diving in through the moat of people. "John, just calm down," he instructed.

"No!" John twisted out of his grasp, breath short and almost panicked for fear of what denial would cost him. "This has nothing to do with yesterday, Greg. I know exactly what's going on."

"Then you remember the crime scene photographs with the nearly severed head, the fact that the Sherlock on our ship was created postmortem which would require Sherlock's body to be present, and that the commissioner himself believes his brother to be dead."

" _I know_. I can't explain it, Greg. I only know what I just saw and felt and I know without a doubt I just bumped into _Sherlock Fucking Holmes_!" He turned to continue his search but was yanked back once more, Lestrade's fingers digging in painfully to his shoulder as he kept him back, his trust already worn thin though there were cracks, tiny cracks, that said he had seen and knew what he saw.

Lestrade pulled him near, doing his best to bring an end to the scene they were no doubt making. "Even if it was Sherlock, what are we meant to do about it?" he asked, his admission in his permitting the question.

John shook his head, hands trembling at his sides. "I don't know. I don't know. And I need to. Jesus Christ, Greg, _he's alive_."

"And he's not our friend. He'd be a complete stranger whose motives are unknown and who may be operating with our enemy."

He was right. Of course he was right. John had seen all the evidence he'd ever need to know that the man he'd just met was someone from a memory. But Greg was far from right about everything. This Sherlock might not have been the exact same man waiting back on the Black Manta but he wasn't their enemy. "He didn't even know what I meant when I said I was surprised he was alive--he thought I was talking about the final battle, not about the murder. I don't think he has any idea what's been going on since he jumped ship."

"So what do we do?" Lestrade asked, fingers easing slowly the more calm John forced himself to appear.

Though how could any man be calm with the universe suddenly spinning upside-down and backwards?

"Don't tell Sherlock. My--our Sherlock. The hologram. Or anyone really. Not until we know more," he ordered, has fists clenching tightly at his sides as hastily scrawled maps of cause and effect plotted his steps in tentative directions through his mind laden with bear traps. Taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders, looking back at his friend with a quite rekindling. "He said he was hitchhiking and that his next stop was Deimos. If we don't run into him again, we can follow him there after repairs are completed. If he's gone, hopefully we can pick up his trail. I think even the commissioner would agree to us taking on a quick side mission considering the objective."

Lestrade nodded slowly, his loyalty to the commissioner satisfied though his concern for a friend still remained evident in his brow. "And what exactly is our objective, captain?" he asked, the question laden in hidden intent.

In this respect, John had little worry of disappointing him. "Track down Sherlock Holmes and figure out what the fuck happened on the Endeavor 1," John announced with anger slowly superseding his initial shock and surprise.

With a deep nod, Lestrade released his shoulder. The game was once again on.


	7. Chapter 7

John could not tell Sherlock about the man he'd met in the halls of Delphi that day. There was no way in which he could think to frame it where the question of what it meant did not come to mind. There was no trying to convince anyone that his interest in the living and breathing Sherlock Holmes was limited only to the mystery of his supposed death the year before. His affection for the hologram version was hardly a secret, and the limitations inherent in it were even more widely known. With Sherlock the hologram, John had an amazing past and present but only with a living Sherlock could there ever be a future. And what did that mean? What did that make the man he'd changed his whole outlook and values for matter in the end if what he now aimed to pursue was little more than hope and expectation delivered now in a package he could touch? Was his Sherlock somehow lesser now that he was just a copy living a parallel life outside that of the original? Yes. Yes, he was. And there was no limit to the self-loathing such thoughts created when for so long John'd thought he'd buried such prejudices with the evidence that lived beside him.

Standing in the kitchen, kettle finally coming to a boil, John poured out a small cuppa for himself to sit in silence and mull over. Guilt made him feel ill but the hot, soothing liquid promised to help settle the symptoms even if it could do nothing for the sickness in his head. Or his heart. It was hard to discern the source when it seemed as though both were at war with themselves and each other. It was his head that undoubtedly riled once more against the idea of a computer program being equal to a man, the same thoughts that had caused revulsion at his own copy and rarely had an excuse to make themselves known. When Sherlock was the last memories of a dead man--a man murdered with a life cut short, when a hologram existed as a continuation of a lost life, it made sense that it was deserving of the same treatment as the man it replaced. But a copy? That was more than unnatural, it was wrong. One was more important than the other therefore one was more human and the other less deserving of being held to the same level defining life and liberties. 

But what made the hologram of a dead man different from a copy of a living one? Not one damn thing. Same process, same technology, same results. So how could one be the same as a man and not the other, and was it a question of defining life itself or of redefining ones morality? That was where the heart came in and it honestly had very little to offer in adequate response.

English breakfast with a spot of milk. No sugar. He only took sugar at Sherlock's request. _"It smells a bit like moldy coffee beans--musky but rich and kind of sweat-sweet. It smells like the taste of perspiration on that bit between your upper lip and your nose. But darker. Older. It has an aged smell like dusty books that isn't necessarily pleasant on its own but is fantastic when you're anticipating the taste. And it tastes like burnt water but the best burnt water in the world. Rich and smooth, the aged smell turning to a bold bitterness on the back of the tongue, spiked with hints of sweetness then overpowered by the taste of sugar. Sugar ruins it and masks everything subtle in the flavors until it's not much different from sweetened milk. It takes almost no time at all before the cup's almost painfully hot but that's not enough to make me want to put it down. All I want is another sip of something that doesn't honestly smell like much, and doesn't even really taste that great. Because it's still somehow the best goddamn thing I've had all day and later on and tomorrow I'm still going to want another."_ Without the sugar, it was still just burnt water with bitterness added in its brew. And it was still the one thing he wanted more than anything when nothing in the universe seemed right. 

John leaned against the counter with his mug, letting the steam fill his senses as he tried to forget the image of Sherlock standing on the other side, face smiling as he managed to get John to describe more of the world to him in ever increasing detail. Reading had helped to develop in him a sense of storytelling that fueled his metaphors and similes in ways that seemed useful to the hologram. He didn't complain, anyway. He usually just smiled. And sometimes, when he thought no one was watching, he pretended to hold his own mug of tea and breathed in deeply above the rim of his imaginary drink.

In what sane world did such a man have his humanity dependent on the existence of the original? The man John knew had not changed in the slightest just because new facts came to light in regards to his individuality. The man who had challenged him--the man he loved beyond reason's reach--was as unaltered by this new information as John had been when confronted by his own copy. They weren't suddenly different people just because they weren't the sole versions of themselves. But was a machine equal to a man, and if so then did they both have a right to the life and identity that had been the sole property of the living person before the copy was made? Was the idea of a single entity antiquated now with reason to expand expectations of humanity into two, three, four, an infinite number of possible existences all living branches of the same life like an old oak tree with the originator as the trunk? Was life simply an expression of free will and if so, then how long until even androids deserved the title and moral consideration?

They were all confusing thoughts made exponentially bigger in their application than in their current and persistent form. It came down to one thought only when distilled to its most basic parts: did John Watson love Sherlock Holmes or was the hologram he'd lived with nothing more than an offshoot possibility that the real man could no longer become? Should he think of them as two different people or as one? And of course, Sherlock would know or at least know which interpretation he preferred to work from. Both Sherlock's would. And no one said they'd both agree. In fact, John was rather certain they'd have very differing opinions on the matter. It only made sense that John not be the only one of two minds on the subject.

"You look like just ate Constance's cooking."

John looked up, tea warm in his mouth as he spotted Sherlock's rippling projection standing in the doorway. Still not fixed. In this instance, it helped. It was hard to lose track of which man he was observing when the hologram was obvious to point out. He sniffed back on a slightly runny nose, his sinuses well opened by the steam of his mug. "Just a headache," he lied, looking anywhere but at him. "All those people pushing and crowding around. It's a nightmare. Should have known it'd be a mess what with the battle not far and all."

Sherlock hummed in agreement and walked closer, mimicking a lean against the other side of the counter. "Never know what kind of diseases you can catch at places like these."

"Not that you have to worry," John lightly teased. It fell hollow, though, and he sipped again. "Actually, it's probably better that you're stuck on the ship. I wouldn't put it past the lot out there to steal your propulsion unit soon as they figured out you were a hologram. With the crowds as they are, that'd be pretty likely too."

"Perhaps you're right," Sherlock agreed with a sigh. His eyes watched John intently.

John didn't care so much if he was right or not. He only cared about the two Sherlock's running into each other and the possible ramifications of such a meeting. John didn't want his Sherlock to face a crisis of existence any more than he currently enjoyed his own venture into the subjects of life and its meaning. Or meanings--why stop at one? But at risk of the hologram losing his fragile grasp on sanity, John would rather he not know about the fate of his living self until the circumstances were well known and precautions could be taken to ease him into the knowledge that he was not unique.

"Did you find any good info or was it purely a shopping excursion?"

"Not much," John admitted, though he had enough sense to lay seeds where fertile ground was found. "Heard security was pretty lax around Deimos, though. Might make it an attractive spot for a man dealing in illegal acts seeing as the first-hand reports I overheard said most mining details were stepping their game up."

Sherlock nodded patiently, expression thoughtful. "Mars has never been much of a hot spot. The military base is about the only thing of tactical value and that's limited mostly to the planet itself. The moons are practically pleasure getaways for soldiers, the rich, and the elite."

"Exactly the sort of people you were just saying this morning might have an interest in Moriarty's kind of help," John reminded him, pleasantly surprised by how easy it seemed to coerce his personal plan of action into seeming like the most logical step towards another.

The hologram continued to nod, brows raised in positive assessment. "Deimos sounds as good a place as any. Providing you don't bet the ship and lose the lot."

"Like I'd ever risk losing you," he said on autopilot, the words too easy and the sentiment born from every interaction no matter how mundane.

Sherlock's smile grew deeper, the static of his projection cutting out the transition of colors in his eyes. "Enjoy your burnt water, John," he said with a silent chuckle in his wake, taking with him the quiet peace his presence had instilled over the warring factions inside of his friend.

John watched him go and sipped from his mug. 

Sometimes he missed the ease of life from a detainment cell.


	8. Chapter 8

Despite looking for him for hours every day, John never again bumped into the definitive Sherlock Holmes. Still, it was hard to be disappointed when the thought of seeing him again also carried with it the weight of dread. He surely had answers even if he didn't know yet what the questions were and the answers would definitively define everything John thought he knew about man he'd only just met. 

"You and Sherlock were always going on about some unknown accomplice," Lestrade said from his shared bench at the pub, cold amber brew never leaving his hand as he drank away the long hours of observation. "Think maybe the man you were looking for was Sherlock all along?"

John shook his head, fingers picking apart the dimpled shell of a peanut. "Like I said, he had no idea why I'd have assumed he'd be dead. He doesn't know anything about that but he must have volunteered to be made into a hologram before he left. Whoever asked him to do that was definitely involved. I mean, you've got to figure it was a hologram or projection of some sort that posed for the murder photographs. Bribe some security personnel and at least one known member of the medical staff and you've got a crime scene report and a death certificate with a 'body' disposed of before anyone can ask for more. And we already know someone in the medical bay was involved because of the drug access."

Lestrade shrugged absently, lips back to foam as they continued to scan the corridor out the pub's storefront windows. It wouldn't be long till the final engine tests and maintenance checks were complete. Restocked and fueled up, they could leave as soon as Imogen gave them the go. And they would. They'd already been days docked in the Delphi hanger for private-class transport ships. They were losing time if they expected to find Sherlock still dallying on Deimos. And if they missed him, they'd be back on yet another man-hunt. For now, looking for Moriarty coincided with their plan to hunt for their undead friend. Those paths wouldn't always cross, though. Eventually, a choice would have to be made as to which target their resources were best put towards.

"I think you're a little too dismissive of the idea that this Sherlock might not be who we think he is," the security officer warned, his reflection in the window glass showing a tight lip though his face did its best to remain impassive. "Think of it from his perspective. Here he is, walking around Delphi, and suddenly the man he framed with murder approaches him out of the crowd. Of course he's going to play dumb. We both know he's smarter than to admit to it and that he's one hell of an actor. Maybe it was his plan all along to fake his death and run away. It wouldn't be out of character for him if he thought it was the only way to avoid his brother's shadow."

John nearly bit his tongue as his molars slammed down into the hard body of a peanut, smashing it to crumbs against the pocket of his cheek. "I'd considered that," he lied. He'd tried to but never been able to stomach it as a real possibility. "That still wouldn't explain the weapons on the ship stored along his maintenance route or someone attempting to murder me once people started to take us seriously."

"It would if he were working with Moriarty."

"That would mean the person who underestimated Sherlock was Sherlock himself," John pointed out, adding a chuckle to accompany the rolling of his eyes. "The day Sherlock manages humility is the day science finds a solution to entropy."

"Not necessarily," Lestrade said, leaning in on one elbow as he faced John instead, abandoning his post with an unhelpful gaze. "Our Sherlock has no memories of aiding Moriarty so if we were working off a scenario where Sherlock is the accomplice, then they have altered the hologram data in some way to remove culpability. It might also explain why he's able to operate as a hologram for an extended amount of time--he's not a whole human; he's the parts they left behind."

"Why leave him behind at all?" John asked, then immediately answered for himself as the obvious answer came to mind. "The trial," he concluded, then scowled once more. "But that still wouldn't explain why it was me."

Lestrade shook his head. "It doesn't explain anything. It's all just speculation. I'm just saying maybe we shouldn't go into this thinking the search for Sherlock and the one for Moriarty are two separate things. For all we know, Sherlock _is_ Moriarty and there's just the one person out there spreading misery around."

John tried not to react too obviously to that particular idea, busying himself with another peanut shell as he let the possibility sink in. Sherlock the villain. Sherlock the mastermind behind his incarceration and attempted murder in the medical bay. Sherlock the enemy who sent half a million people to be slaughtered by Simulants; the yin to Commissioner Holmes' yang. Accepting such a hypothetical was almost brain breaking. Because it honestly wasn't nearly as hard to do as it should be. 

Shaking his head, John chucked the broken shell into his pile and popped the freed peanut into his mouth. "We'll know when we find him," he said, and left it at that. No more speculations for today. 

Their Sherlock, at the very least, did not have too many of his own. Taking Michael off his system repairs to help Imogen meant the ship got up and running faster as much as it did that Sherlock remained stuck on the Black Manta for now. They were keeping him prisoner more or less, more or less for his own good as well. Thus far Sherlock, while annoyed and bored, seemed to understand the primary motive and suspect nothing else above a vague concern for John that could easily be attributed to the captain feeling ill. That wouldn't last, though. In the time it took them to get from Delphi to Deimos, Michael would be able to return to his work. He might even get everything fixed and ready, permitting Sherlock to alight once they'd reached the Martian moon. And then Sherlock might meet Sherlock with unforeseeable damages done. So the trouble now existed in keeping the hologram systems broken. It called for deceit--something John was not exceedingly good at. But if it protected the hologram's sense of validity then so be it.

"What are we going to tell Michael?" John asked, leaving the segue to his companion who was versed in following along from one salient point to another.

Lestrade was already back to searching out the window, glass half empty in his hand. "Work slow?" he provided, then shrugged and gave a sigh. "There's nothing we can tell him to do that won't make him suspicious. And since he's Sherlock's hands and feet, his suspicions will definitely get back to Sherlock. We're mostly lucky, I suppose, that the problems are as much to do with the transceiver as with the core systems on the ship."

John nodded along. "Last I spoke to him about it he said we still have transmission interference. Nothing he can do about it in an asteroid belt with who knows how many magnetic rocks flying around, destabilizing signal relays. Maybe we don't have to tell him anything. Just... interrupt him. Ask him questions. One of us accidentally leans up against the wrong thing and we can conceivably set him back days or weeks."

"And risk the hologram's mental health by keeping him cooped up."

John sighed, hands raking through his hair with a frustrated tug. "I get that by trying to protect him from one thing I am putting him in danger of another. I really do. But it's not like we're not stuck on the ship for eighty percent of the time anyway."

"I know. Just.. just saying. They're all going to find out eventually."

"And when they do, it will be when we have more to say than just ' _Oh, by the way, Sherlock Holmes is alive'_."

Lestrade nodded quietly and tipped his glass, downing the rest of his drink.

They stayed until the barman changed with the end of one shift signaling the hour as best as any clock. Nothing in Delphi ever closed; time was meaningless when there was nothing close to day or night to monitor its passage. Ships came and went regardless of the hour and one man's morning was another man's night. Even on the Black Manta there was no set measure of time with different crew-members preferring different increments of waking hours. The clock might say three a.m. Space Standard but John's body said it was just now going on tea. Time for food a bit more substantial than nuts and a return to a much more comfortable abode. They paid their tab and walked out into the ever-bustling halls back down towards the bottleneck of souls making their way through the hanger doors.

"I'd like to tell the commissioner," Lestrade said at their last available avenue of privacy, the two of them shouldering their way through crowds pushing in the opposite direction close enough to hear without raising his voice.

John's frown bit into his eyes, his lips down-turned and heavy. "I think we're better off asking forgiveness than approval here, Greg. He finds out and we could be looking at a full-scale retrieval operation involving half the armada."

"It's his brother."

"Yeah, I get that. And he personally took the Proteus to come and claim his killer," John reminded him, licking across his thin lips in agitation. "He thinks with his resources, not always with everyone else's best interests in mind. We have no idea why Sherlock's laying low or what he's done. Anything Holmes does could drive him into hiding. We want to succeed, we remain the only two who really know what's going on right now."

It was easy to see how much Lestrade disliked that idea. Withholding information from his superior aside, he was being asked to keep secrets from everyone who trusted him to be straightforward and transparent. This was the antithesis of his moral character that believed in hard truths and bullying through. He didn't skate around details and leave things unexplained--that was Sherlock's job. It was Sherlock who delighted in being the only one in the room to really know what was going on, who loved nothing more than to be seen as a marvel as he proved himself to be of greater understanding than everyone else. And that was exactly why they needed to follow his example rather than their own. One didn't find Sherlock Holmes by acting like John Watson and Gregory Lestrade; people who made their intentions clear and weren't afraid of their own ignorance. One found Sherlock Holmes by being a little bit cruel and a hell of a lot more cunning.

"Why do I have the feeling we're being lead into some kind of trap?" Greg asked, resignation heavy on his breath.

"Because no matter what else, the man we're after is Sherlock," John reminded him. "And since when has anything involving Sherlock Holmes ended as anyone has ever expected?"


	9. Chapter 9

The inner solar system was a much quieter place than the rest of the known regions of space. Simulants tended to stay away. No one really knew why. Even with protection offered through the corridor at which Delphi was the central port, most navigation systems could handle the asteroid belt without all that much difficulty. Kamikaze as they were, there should have been hundreds of them descending upon the Martian landscape, dropping out of atmo to crash into the military installation planet-side, making ruin of the casinos and resorts that circled around in orbit on the rocky satellites. But there weren't. There never had been. Conspiracy theorists loved to point out the inconsistency of the Simulant mindset and their failure to attack close to home. Most conspiracy nuts hadn't ever been to war though. John knew exactly how valid reports of Simulant aggression and their pursuit of mindless murder were. It was a blessing they stayed away as far as he was concerned. Casualties would be astronomical if they pushed past the natural barrier. And if they'd gotten hold of Endeavor 1, they might have done just that.

Deimos glittered outside the main screens of the cockpit, alight with life and never-ending activity in scrolling shades of gold, red and blue from a million and one blinking marques. It was the Vegas of an expanding world full of every sort of decent venue of entertainment and offering the indecent as well from the shadows. John knew it rather well. He'd spent time in the Martian military base both before and after his injury. He'd completed basic there. Best hospital outside of Earth and fitted to service all manner of health concerns from the physical to the mental. There was even an asylum. John hadn't seen that particular location and was grateful for it to this day. But Deimos he remembered quite well as a place of endless surprises. One last time, fingers crossed, he hoped it never would disappoint.

"Does it have to be all business, captain?" Constance asked, her chin resting on her fist as she leaned against the console. "I mean, we did just spend all our waking hours trying to repair the ship. Little R&R never hurt anything."

John chuckled, hiding his growing nerves in good humor. "How much money did you lose here during training?"

"Lost? Ha! They named a drink after me at my favorite casino: The Red Constant. Then they banned me for being too good. If it weren't for the respectability of being a pilot, I'd retire and take up gambling instead. Except, you know, no one ever fires you for being too good of a pilot. So there's that too."

"What you do with your pay is up to you," John acquiesced, not sure he believed her entirely but absolutely solid on the fact he wouldn't be surprised to find out it was true. Constance didn't tend to brag above and beyond her skill though her level of confidence was second only to one. "I think Sherlock's stuck staying behind to watch the ship anyway," he added, thoughts carrying through on logistics as the ship continued its descent.

Constance cracked her knuckles as the 'monkey button' piloted them in with little required of her as it did. "Shame. Plenty of unscrupulous people out there rubbing elbows with the elite. Great mix of selfishness and greed--just the sort of place a man like Moriarty might hang out."

"Which is precisely why we didn't come before."

John looked over his shoulder at the hologram as Sherlock haunted the doorway with his fizzled specter, arms crossed over his chest as he observed them on deck and the growing details in the buildings on their approach. 

"Too obvious," Sherlock continued. "But, then again, not everything has to be clever. Just because the man himself is doesn't mean his clientele are."

Constance swiveled in her seat to face him. "You going to be okay here on your own?" she asked, her sympathies genuine regardless of his technical nature.

Sherlock shrugged his shoulders, eyes boring into John. "I don't have much of a choice," he said, his voice tight with intent and not in the least bit lacking in suspicion.

That wasn't entirely unexpected. Of course Sherlock would come to suspect _something_. Never in a million years would he manage to come to the right conclusion but hoping to work completely under his radar was futile and stupid to say the least. That he had already come to the conclusion that John was behind it was less than stellar but still predictably Sherlock. So John had damage control--oh well. In his mind, it was still better than the alternatives he'd seen.

"I'm sorry your systems still aren't working well enough," he offered, palms up at his sides in an attempt at sincerity.

Sherlock's eyes darkened slightly. "No," he said. "You're not." And without another word turned and walked away.

Well, shit. John didn't so much as spare a look towards Constance as he followed his friend out, jogging down the corridor after him as the hologram made a purposeful trek towards his technical bay. John caught up to him in the dining area where Imogen sat eating an apple with a book on the table in front. "Sherlock," he called, no possible way to grab hold of him to keep him still if the hologram still chose to walk away.

"If you think you can do this without me, you're wrong," he shouted back, not stopping or turning around but slowing down at least, no longer demanding quick pursuit.

"Do what?" John asked, playing ignorant, hoping whatever Sherlock thought was going on was as easy to dismiss as his own chances of dismissing the truth.

"Finding Moriarty."

John shook his head. "I don't think that. I'm not trying to take you off the case."

"Then what _are_ you trying to do because it's rather obvious you're trying to keep me on this ship and therefore away from something else," he railed, stopping at last to face John in the center of the room.

John licked his lips. "You're being paranoid," he tried, deflection better than confrontation. Better for him, at least. Sherlock's look of disgust said it was far from the proper response. One scowl and his back was turned again, his steps once more leading him away. John hurried to follow. "Sherlock!" he yelled and was met with the immediate charge of a very angry hologram stepping towards him rather than away, leaning in till he cowered in surprise under the taller man's looming figure.

"You want to leave me behind, fine! There is absolutely _nothing_ I can do about that. In fact, why don't you just turn me off the next time you feel like robbing me of any choice in the matter? You think its less objectifying if you keep me trapped rather than just look me in my face and flick the switch?"

John's mouth felt overly wet with spit, his backwards steps akin to the backpedaling in his head that looked for some way to rectify the situation now at hand. "You really think I think so little of you that I'd treat you that way?" he asked.

"No!" Sherlock shouted. "And yet you are. And I don't understand why."

Imogen bit off another bite of her apple, the sound an interesting accentuation to the sharp, crisp manner of their words as they bit back and forth at each other with increasing hurt and defensive jabs. John would much rather not have an audience for a tiff between Sherlock and himself but privacy made it seem as though he had something to hide. And he did. And no one who didn't know really needed to right now. So he stood up a bit taller, locking his spine up straight to better hold his ground. "Can we maybe stop yelling at each other for a minute?" he asked, willing to settle for civility in the middle of the dining room if they really had to do this here.

"That depends. Are you going to tell me what you're doing?" the hologram asked.

John hesitated between one lie or another, and in the pause seemed to tell Sherlock everything he needed to know. The hologram smirked with derision, nostrils flaring on a nasally scoff as he shook his head and took a step back.

"Of course not. Because how can you possibly tell me you're cheating on me when that puts us into an impossible context," he said, hiding the hurt well in all ways but the tension in his jaw. "You're not cheating on the toaster when you use the oven. Same basic principle. I can't do things. Most things. In fact 'doing' is entirely beyond my capabilities as a hologram. I look, I hear, and I speak. And that's more than enough to know the reason you don't want me on Deimos is so you can meet someone. So I suppose you can stop feeling guilty already. I'm not so stupid as to not figure out there's someone else. And that's fine. It was going to happen sooner or later anyway. Just remember that I'm not here to spend my nights with you. I'm here to find Moriarty. And you can't render me useless just because your conscious can't support the idea of me being anywhere near whatever new fancy you've taken to."

John stood stunned, gut sour and cold, with a dire need to grab him and tell him he was wrong even as his brain supplied the all too disgusting truth that no, no he wasn't. There was someone else. He was meeting them on Deimos--with any luck. And he didn't want Sherlock to know or ever see him interacting with a version of him he could touch. He felt guilty and it did feel like cheating even if they'd never consented to be more than friends by title even if their actions blurred the lines. There wasn't one way in which Sherlock was wrong. John was every bit the arsehole he described him to be and deserving of worse when considering who the other person was--a version of the man he loved that was nothing except the one thing he could never be: alive.

Sherlock didn't wait for a response. John's silence was more than enough. He took a deep breath and turned away one last time, finally allowed to leave the room and return to the technical bay without John chasing his heels. Instead, John stood in the stink of his own disgusting actions to the tune of another hearty bite of fruit. "You might want to write it down next time to make sure you didn't miss anything," he chided, Imogen shrugging it off as she'd been there first after all. 

Already made a fool, John marched off to his own room where privacy was at least assured. They'd come this far and they still had further to go. Damage control could wait until they had answers. Sherlock had no choice but to wait. The least John could do was stew in his own well-intentioned juices till their landing protocols were done.

Deimos was exactly the way John remembered it from the smokey smell to the lightheaded feeling that came with being in a clustered dome filtered through with a bit too heavy an oxygen mix of air. It was a happy place and they manufactured it to be that way. Happy people didn't start brawls or miss their lost earnings all that badly. Happy people bought souvenirs and lived the epicurean life. Happy people stayed and always came back. John wasn't a happy person.

With Lestrade the only other crewman informed on what it was they were looking for, the crew of the Black Manta had gone their separate ways with the promise to rendezvous at breakfast the next day to regroup and check their status. John walked the streets alone, fists deep in his pockets, more angry with himself than he cared to admit. His whole life, it seemed, revolved around chasing ghosts. Whether it was Sherlock, Moriarty, or once again Sherlock, it was all the same in the end. Success was never going to be enough--if the concept even had room to exist in the scope of his life. He was a greedy beast that had no use for the virtue of contentment. He needed to stop trying to convince himself he was someone worthwhile. If the events over the past few days had taught him anything it was that he was far from worthy of his gains. He had Sherlock Holmes and here he was tracking down a stranger. Was the mystery really so important that it warranted his behavior? Apparently. Against all reason. He was here after all despite him. Without him.

John dragged his heels as he walked, almost determined not to enjoy himself. Music was everywhere and there were people laughing and singing but he refused to find reprieve. He did not deserve it. He was working right now. That was all. Anything more than in the interests of duty was too much in light of his crimes. He popped into venues only to look at the crowd and let his eyes view the scenery just to see who else was walking by. He'd hurt the one who mattered most. Fuck music, fuck fun, and fuck him.

There was no way of even knowing if the living Sherlock was still on Deimos or what part of it he'd traveled to. It was a domed city comprising of thousands of people who wouldn't know a strange face from their neighbors for all the changing of patrons around them. The few times he stopped to ask if anyone had seen a tall man with dark, curly hair he'd been pointed to people who matched the vague description but were never the man he sought. Even less helpful was asking if anyone had heard of Moriarty or Sherlock Holmes. _"I hear a lot of names, mate."_ Yes, he was sure they had. Those were the only one that mattered, though. Too many people, too many strange visitors, and each and every one of them a needle in someone else's haystack. Five hours into his search, John finally found a park bench to settle on for routine observation. Moving around certainly hadn't gotten him anywhere. Maybe sitting still for a change would.

The bench was hard and cold on his backside and the sound of the fountain in the background gave his body something to synch with that wasn't the fast beat of a dance tune pouring out from the clubs onto the street. It wasn't a quiet spot but the sounds of it were much more comforting that those of the main city avenues. Here John could think and judge the people who passed him, keeping an eye out for familiar faces which were more numerous than the ones that carried on beside him in the sidewalk streams. From the bench he could see dovey couples and vacationing families, friends from the military base below still in uniform as they paraded like heroes towards the bars. It was interesting to remember that they were all important to someone, all the main characters in their own lives and cast in starring roles in others' as well. John certainly didn't feel like the main character in his own life. If anyone was, it was Sherlock Holmes. Life hadn't been anything worth remembering before him. And, of course, he'd found the perfect way to demonstrate his importance to him by betraying his trust and abandoning him to fate. If John was anything, he was his own antagonist. There was nothing so good in his life that he couldn't find a way to fuck it up.

"Is this seat taken?" a deep voice asked.

John turned his head, expecting to see Sherlock standing there but still somewhat surprised. He wasn't wearing one of his pre-programmed suits but instead a simple white button-down tucked neatly into denim jeans that hugged sinfully at his hips. He didn't fizzle or break into static with intermittent transmission errors. He looked solid and gorgeous and John could smell his cologne in the air.

Sherlock sat down beside him without waiting for an answer, his smirk self-satisfied and devilish as the wind disrupted his hair. "I had a feeling I'd see you again," he said, looking out at the crowds instead of at him. "Going to try and convince me you didn't come here looking for me knowing I'd said I'd be here?"

"No." John felt mesmerized by him, dizzy beyond the scope of oxygen saturation. It was him. He was there. And once again, nothing else seemed to matter. "I'm John," he said, realizing he'd missed out on that part before.

"Hello, John," the silken voice replied, then wrapped up with a grin. "You've got five minutes to convince me to bother remembering that name before I decide your determination is more pathetic than commendable. Your time starts now," he ordered with finality, as full of himself as ever and every bit as formidable in his unspoken threats.

John didn't even have to think about his response. "I came to talk to you about your death on the Endeavor 1 and how you came to be on Delphi while I spent time in a cell for your murder.

Sherlock sat up a little straighter, his left brow cocked with an equally crooked smirk. "Five seconds," he announced. "Now that is impressive. Your place or mine?"

"Yours," John answered without question.

Sherlock nodded and stood, waiting for John to do the same as he lead the way with purposeful steps out of the courtyard towards the hotel strip that overlook the fountains and green.


	10. Chapter 10

Sherlock's hotel room was much nicer than John had assumed a hitchhiking man of few means would be able to come by on his own. The ceilings were high, one whole wall was made of mirrors, and the bed was so large John felt quite sure he could get his whole crew in it nestled comfortably rather than snug. The powerful red accents and deep wood furnishings were all trendy and stylish while busy patterns drew the eyes from the tables in the corner to the large windows facing out. The city's lights made halos of bright colors as they flashed and reflected back out towards the garden square. It wasn't extravagant but it was certainly pricy. Sherlock's casual attire only made it look more so as he paced through the room to a seating area with two chairs around a dark wood table under the glow of the window's refracted lights.

"Have a seat," he said, pushing the other chair out with the extension of a long leg.

While John had never denied the man's attractiveness, those limbs and curves belonging to someone he could touch made moths fly through his stomach like a schoolboy all over again. John cleared his throat, trying to be mindful of his body language though he felt quite sure the other man had already pegged his desire from the start. It didn't make things easier but the fact that he seemed okay with it was good grounds for a start. Not in this conversation, perhaps, but in future details. He certainly didn't seem to mind what he saw in John. 

He hardly waited at all for John to be seated before leaning back, his fingers steepled at his lips with a crossed leg bouncing his toes in his direction, posture invested but still imbuing calm. "You mentioned a murder," he said. "My murder, in fact. I'm assured you can tell me more than that."

"Of course," John insisted, clearing his throat again as a nervous tightness settled at its base. "There's hardly a detail about it that I don't know. I was put on trial for it and convicted. So you can imagine my surprise--"

"Yes, I can. So going back to the interesting bits, what exactly do you believe happened?"

Ah, yes; this guy. The bossy Sherlock who wanted things his way, the disagreeable man who had no form of tact. John let the distant memory of their first meeting wash over him with a soothing hum, recollecting the initial annoyance he'd been with little hope of him having bettered on his own. He was an endearing jackass if he let him be. He certainly wasn't inherently esteemed. John leaned his elbows on his knees and relaxed in his presence, the room little more than another shared cell and the story one they'd spoken of many times as memory served.

"I was a doctor on the Endeavor 1. You and I had never met before but... well, things changed. We were both given benzodiazepines at the time of your murder. That meant you didn't remember being killed and I didn't remember if I'd killed you. The ship's court still felt it was enough to convict me on circumstantial evidence, though. You died over a year ago on January 29th. That's what the formal reports say. Even your brother thinks you're dead. I'm working with him to try and find your killer in fact." John rubbed the back of his neck, anything to keep himself from staring as his eyes traveled up the long legs to the ghost of skin under the thin white shirt, the V of the open collar that exposed the full column of his neck. "I, uh... I ended up with a hologram of you as part of my sentencing. He worked out that there must have been an accomplice helping a mastermind for everything to have happened the way it did. And after we discovered the stash of weapons on the ship and the rest of the plot, Commissioner Holmes figured the likely culprit was this James Moriarty character."

"You found the weapons?" Sherlock interrupted. "Is that how you figured out the Simulant angle?"

John shook his head. "Sherlock.. I mean.. your hologram figured everything out. It was because of him everyone survived. He knew something big was going to happen and what to do to stop it. He almost didn't get a chance, though. Someone tried to murder me as well and they managed to get Sherlock shut off. But one of the security leads had the sense to turn him back on after the weapons were found and even the captain had the sense to obey his orders once everything went to shit."

"My hologram really made such an impression?" Sherlock asked, his expression one of unadulterated surprise.

John nodded vigorously with ever assurance in his heart. "Yes. He was absolutely amazing. Is--is amazing. He's why I'm here; why I have a million things I want to ask you about what happened on the Endeavor 1."

Sherlock nodded, expression held part way between acceptance and disappointment. He was more interested in John's story than in his own and John couldn't blame him for that when he knew there were so many important things he'd glossed over. But nothing meant anything without Sherlock's part in all of it. Nothing would ever make sense with his version of events. Letting his hands fall to his lap as he stood suddenly from his chair, Sherlock spun around to face the ship captain, never one to be confined to a single place as thoughts put words to his lips and motion to his feet in a fine kinetic display. "I imagine that is of great interest to you considering the impact I've had on your life," he said, a towering presence but far from overbearing. "I suppose you want it all from the beginning then?"

"It'd be helpful, yeah," John replied with anticipation, leaning back to gaze at him without bending his neck to do so.

The tall gentleman smiled tightly and started to pace, his words spouted double time in metric to his feet. "As you wish. I originally settled on the Endeavor 1 because it was the largest mining vessel heading into deep space that contracted out to cheap, uncertified labor. Then it was just a matter of filling the technician ranks with men in my employ. They were able to restock the food compartments with weapon stores and take on the menial tasks of guarding them through their scheduled tasks."

John's heart felt like a frozen chunk of stone but Sherlock wasn't done talking and just kept right on.

"Of course, the other issue was making sure there were Simulants there to receive the care package. That part was just as easy. My contacts let them know the exact coordinates when the Endeavor 1 would be just outside normal transmission fields if the signal wasn't bolstered by internal antennae. Long story short, with the ship's schedule and coordinates planned ahead of time, all I had to do was make sure it got out past the Gamma station on Triton without any issues."

John could barely breathe let alone move, his lungs encased too tightly in their cage. "What... what are you saying? You? You.. you planned all that?" 

"Obviously," Sherlock replied, arms crossing behind his back. "And you know why, of course." He looked at John, his smile faltering to a pitying frown as he tisked his stunned companion. "Really, John? None of you figured it out? I would have thought you'd be able to put together the pieces in the end. How on Earth did you lot manage to thwart a secret plan and yet completely miss the motive when it's been staring you in the face this whole time? I wasn't even subtle about it."

"What?"

"The commissioner, John!" he exclaimed loudly, arms up in the air as he spoke. "First the murder of his brother than an attempt to arm his enemies? Who was it that told you about Moriarty? Who is it you're now working for? Who has held the most interest in the bigger picture and been affected the most by everything that has transpired? You?" He smiled thinly. "Yeah, but you're nothing. No one. A pawn. You were nothing more than an easy target I could manipulate to complete my work. Whether you ended up dead or alive in the end meant nothing to me. But Commissioner Holmes on the other hand... now that's speaking to a higher power."

If John had the power to speak it was born solely from the rage of his deceit. How could this be the same man he'd fallen in love with? How was it possible for those two people to be one and the same? His Sherlock did everything to save those people's lives. And this... this _thing_ that wore his face and spoke with his voice was nothing but just another monster. "You... you were going to kill all those people and then some just to get his attention?" he spat out, his teeth clenching so hard he felt his jaw might break under the strain.

Sherlock only seemed to find delight in his pain, regardless of its origin. "For very personal reasons, yes. He needed to understand. And to be given a little push in the right direction."

John shook his head, forcing himself to rise to his feet in order to best stand against him. "You're not even half the man your hologram is."

Sherlock tisked again, finger-wagging to and fro. "Oh, no, Johnny Boy, that's where you're wrong," he said, and in an instant the image of Sherlock Holmes faded away like a mirage into the countenance of someone quite different, shorter, and of a less angular build. His short dark hair was straight and combed back, his clothes no longer casual but a crisp, expensive suit. "You see," he said, in a voice pitched much higher. "I _am_ a hologram. The name's James Moriarty. Hi~ I hear you've been looking for me."


	11. Chapter 11

"Once upon a time there lived a mean old king with enough power and influence to make the rest of the world flinch. What he decided was good was the only thing that mattered and what he disapproved of was punishable by death. No one ever stood up to the king--no one ever dared or had the means to. Until one day a wizard came into his own power and gave the king something new to think about. But I suppose that's enough talk about fairy stories. You're interested in a different kind of tale." Moriarty smirked, rocking on his soles as he clasped his hands behind his back. "You know, he did warn us before we killed him that we were making a big mistake. That he wasn't someone to be trifled with. I didn't believe him obviously but I suppose I should have known. He was clever even then. Quite clever. And yes, 'we' does, in fact, include you, dear boy; you did murder Sherlock Holmes. Would you like to hear how? I don't mind telling. I had quite a bit of fun that night in fact.

"I hadn't planned on him being on the ship but it was simply too good an opportunity to pass up. I mean, I thought mass murder and destruction would get Commissioner Holmes's attention but this was his baby brother, his blood, standing right next to me in the technician line-up. I don't suppose anyone else knew his importance--people really only know the names of figureheads and televised personalities. Obviously he had to die; it was just too _perfect_. And I'd planned to do it myself at first but there would only be a hologram if there was a trial and a sentencing. And there had to be a hologram for the message to be loud and clear. Because it has nothing to do with corporate interests and everything to do with this."

Moriarty produced a small diamond shaped transceiver from the a drawer near the bed, holding it only until it started levitating by itself on its own power. Even without being told what it was, John knew he already knew. Because James Moriarty had _held_ the thing, had _touched_ the drawer, and for all the proof he was a hologram, there was still all the reason for doubt in the world that he was not. 

"This is a quantum light generator," he explained with a grin. "It is illegal, the scientists who created it are in exile, and it is one of the many things Commissioner Holmes and I are of different minds on. Because to him, a hologram is just a machine. But we know better, don't we, John? And I'm sure I can think of someone else who knows that too." 

Before John even had a second on which to guess his next move, Moriarty had touched the floating transceiver and set the thing in motion. Lines of bright light wove through the air on a pattern, building from the floor up the long legs in their tailored suit to the last wisp of curls on his head as the body of Sherlock Holmes as John knew it now stood in the room beside the madman Moriarty. Sherlock blinked, his confusion self-evident, his eyes scanning the room wildly in a convincing show of authenticity.

"I took the liberty of patching into the Black Manta's hologram computer while you were on Delphi," Moriarty explained as he stepped back to give him room. "Sorry about the signal issues but I needed my technology to have priority access to give you this little taste of what it's all been about."

"John?" the Sherlock asked, taking a step in his direction and immediately going shock still as his heel connected with the solid floor. It even made a sound. His eyes were immediately drawn to his feet, his body shifting with his weight over one foot and the other. God, it was a convincing display but John was still too shocked to trust in another depiction of Sherlock Holmes.

Moriarty had no problem in feeding the belief that in fact it was the other hologram somehow projected there. "I figure he has as much if not more interest in what I have to say. Please, take a seat. We were just getting to the part in the story where I explain how I got the good doctor here to murder you."

If it wasn't the real Sherlock Holmes, it certainly was a good approximation. He bolted up straight, eyes locking on to their host with cold precision in his glare. "Moriarty," he said, picking up the pieces as they went, working out the situation bit by well-earned bit.

The other man bowed politely, his own eyes somewhat crazy. "A pleasure. You were right, Sherlock. You are much more than just your brother's sibling. But I still wouldn't change one thing about the way things worked out. You're just like me now."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Moriarty smiled. "No, I don't suppose you do. Shall I tell you? I want to tell you. Consider it a gift for you being oh so clever." He took hold of Sherlock's arm, the contact causing the taller man to jump slightly though it only seemed to please the villain more. "Please, sit down. The chairs are velour and very soft with plenty of cushion."

John thought he could detect a small tremor in his limbs as Sherlock edged his way to the vacant chair and slowly settled into it. His eyes were unfathomably wide, his body unnaturally ridged. It took noticeable effort to relax and sink into the comfortable seat and his lips trembled as if in threat of tears as he breathed in ragged breaths. John watched is fingers flinch as they stroked the plush upholstery. The whole world seemed to startle him and John knew, without a doubt, this one was his.

"As I was just telling John, the whole reason I couldn't kill you myself was because I needed a trial and a conviction in order to ensure you'd come back as a hologram. It would make for a much more personal message for your brother than just your murder alone. I had always figured I'd make use of one of the technicians in my employ until I happened across the good doctor here while returning some supplies. Oh, and in case you're wondering how I got in and got the pills myself, well, I think John has a decent idea. I obviously didn't walk in looking like myself, after all, and it's amazing how few people pay attention to a little diamond shaped floating block. Slip in unnoticed, wait around until everyone is gone, then grab the pills and walk on out using one of my many faces.

"It was pure luck that the timer on one of the sterilization units went off while I was there to put the pills back, no better place to hide the evidence than the place where they belonged. At first I thought I'd been caught until I saw that it hadn't awoken the sleeping doctor in the other room, it'd awoken something else entirely. And he obeyed orders very, very well in the context of battle. Obviously a soldier, any idiot could tell, and at his age and with his current employment an injury in the line of duty was much more likely than deserting. So I told him the enemy was on the ship. I ordered him to follow me to where the rogue Simulant was being held and gave him a pill just in case he returned to his senses before we were through. And of course, that room was the one that belonged to you, Sherlock. 

"You'd already taken your medicine seeing as I'd made the switch earlier in the day--that much you got correct. We walked right in and cornered you, telling you exactly what was going to happen: John was going to murder you and your brother would have a very personal reason to reevaluate his stance on all humanity+ lifeforms. Nothing personal. I told you John was currently stuck in a flashback and that the kindest thing to do was to simply submit to death and that I would let it end quickly. Oh, there was a few arguments about whether or not I could get away with it and how I'd just kill you both if you made things too difficult. But then... then you did something that surprised me. That's not easy to do, Sherlock, I hope you understand that.

"You started to take off your clothes. At first I thought it was going to be some boorish attempt at bribery but you said to John ' _Do I look like a Simulant to you?_ ' and kept repeating that with every bit of clothing. The more skin you showed, the less reason there was to believe you were hiding metal parts. You were trying to get John on your side, make him doubt me and perhaps even shake him from his current mindset to help you without having to hurt him. It wasn't until I showed you that I was a hologram that you realize the futility of your attempts. You can't stop something that's not alive, we were on completely different playing fields. But--"

"--but I had a chance if I became a hologram too," Sherlock completed, still stiff but too focused on Moriarty to care about anything outside his words. 

Moriarty nodded. "Exactly. And you promised me you'd do everything in your power to put an end to me; that what I was doing was creating an enemy to rival no other. I obviously didn't believe a word of it. I had John slit your throat and, honestly, that was all. The extreme measures he took in ensuring you were dead were all him after that. Lots of pent up aggression in that one. And from there everything happened exactly as I planned. You were dead, John was found guilty, and there you were as a hologram, the last memories of Commissioner Holmes's dearly departed brother for him to mourn and come to terms with. And then, after that, you ruined everything. Just as you said you would. Well done, Sherlock. Well done indeed." He paused in front of him, a pleased smile on his face. "Only I imagine by now you're much more willing to be my ally than my enemy. How do you like my quantum light generator?"

Sherlock flexed his fingers against the velour. "How is this possible?"

"Basic quantum physics, really. Wave/particle duality; everything that exists in a physical form has an electronic frequency and vice versa. We simply use the mapping of the brain carried over through the hologram procedure to create neural links through the electronic signature. You can taste as well though I don't recommend eating. That's an early model with a timed deterioration I've got you projecting through. More sophisticated models like my own can synthesis digestion in the disassembly of the particle form and dispersion in wave format. Neat, don't you agree?" He asked, flopping down on the end of his bed. "It's all very technical, I know. I don't get into it much myself. That's what scientists are for and I paid good money to get them out of your brother's prisons."

"My brother knows this technology exists?"

"Oh, yes. And he's terrified of it. This is immortality, Sherlock. This is never again fearing death or disease, no need for food or oxygen, it is the first of many steps into conquering the unconquerable. I am a god, Sherlock. We. We are gods," he corrected, his face split with an almost manic grin. "Your big brother can't handle a world that has more than one variable in its terms of humanity. Look what he's done to the Simulants. Poor creatures stripped of everything by corporate greed; this hologram technology could restore them to their previous selves. It could give them back their humanity. It would end the war."

"At a price," Sherlock assured.

Moriarty did not even attempt to pretend otherwise. "Of course. All gods demand tribute. All gods deserve to be worshiped. I have the power to save the universe. And the power to destroy it. Now, your brother thinks he can stop me--he thinks _you_ can stop me, because we're one and the same. But he doesn't know what it's like to be alive inside and dead everywhere else. But I do. I know exactly what it feels like. And it doesn't have to be that way anymore."

Sherlock shook his head though his expression remained closed off. "So your big plan was to make my brother beg you for the technology to give me my life back and a way to end the war with the Simulants. Once he was in your debt, arguing for your causes, you'd further retain power by being the source of the technology that can do it all."

"Except he didn't do it," John interjected, needing to do something other than sit and listen and feel himself rotting from the inside out. "He never caved in. Even involving Sherlock wasn't enough to make him risk working with you."

It was as though Moriarty had forgotten about John in favor of the other hologram. His eyes when he turned to him were unnervingly intense despite their droopy shape, his presence exuding a tightly-bound temper that was threatening to burst out like a chaos locked inside. His tone remained sing-song but everything about him pushed John away. "Do you ever wonder why Simulants don't cross to this side of the asteroid belt, Johnny Boy?" he asked, baiting him still with childish names as though he were interrupting the grownups when he spoke. "Next time you see the commissioner, ask him what he knows. I think you'd be interested in his answer. You think I'm bad? Just wait. I may be playing along for selfish gains but I'm not alone in being less than magnanimous." 

John clenched his teeth and held his stare, silence the only intelligent thing he had left to offer with so few options left and proceedings unsure.

The villain bounced lightly against the mattress, playful, taunting. "So what now, you ask--or would have, eventually. Well, you can't take me into custody or kill me. My projection may be standing right here but there's no telling from where I'm being broadcast from. It'd be as futile as targeting a man's reflection. I obviously didn't use my real name here, you have no idea how many different disguises I can switch to, so really the only thing you know for certain is that I have remote access to the Black Manta's hologram systems which, rationally, should scare you. But don't worry. I'm not interested in erasing him." Moriarty stood up from the mattress, walking the few feet that separated him from Sherlock with slow, careful steps. He raised his left hand, palm up towards Sherlock to beckon him along. "Come with me," he said.

It may as well have been a loaded gun pointing down across at Sherlock's face. "What?" John demanded, his voice tinged in disbelief that the madman thought he had any right to ask or any hope for compliance from the man he'd _murdered_ a year ago.

Sherlock didn't seem nearly as dismayed--or at all for that matter. He held Moriarty's stare with an almost sincere look of consideration, face blank but eyes round and lips parted rather than pursed in an expression of fear. He was afraid, John knew him well enough to know that just by looking at him, but fear wasn't the emotion in control.

"I can offer you a full model upgrade on your hologram projection unit. You'd be as good as alive again. And maybe this time we can make your brother see reason," the devil promised.

John had had more than enough of this. "You're insane!" he shouted, rising to his feet. "You're the reason he's dead! He's not going anywhere with you!"

Moriarty's response was simply to chuckle and take a few more steps back, leaving the couple that wasn't to enjoy the silence that all but marked the answer and with it the end.

John stared at Sherlock, shaking his head in dismay as the other man slowly rose from his seat. "...No. No, _are you kidding_? After everything he's done?!"

"John--"

"No. _Sherlock_ , this is crazy! Tell me you're not actually considering it!" He grabbed Sherlock by his arm, too panicked to rejoice in the reality of touching him, feeling him in his hand and knowing Sherlock felt him too.

The first time John had ever touched him it had been in the act of taking his life. It had been in a bedroom with Moriarty there to observe, his will being enacted by unwilling parties trapped by instinct, fate and fear. It was this moment all over again: John the pawn, Sherlock the prize, and Moriarty the sadistic orchestrator. They'd been here before and each and every one of them knew how it ended. The murder of Sherlock Holmes part two: the unlikely resurrection. Last time Moriarty's plans brought Sherlock into John's life. And this time...

Sherlock placed a trembling hand to John's face, the touch so light and frail, memory no longer preserving the knowledge of what was too hard, what pressure might hurt. The delicate way his fingers pressed against his cheek was nothing compared to the softness of the kiss he slowly granted his lips as their faces met with timid motions but no hesitancy. Sherlock's flinch and stuttered gasp of pleasured surprise may have ended the first kiss but John wouldn't let it end there. He held him by the back of the neck, feeling soft curls for the first time, not letting him pull away until he knew damn well what a kiss was like and the words he'd never braved to share were made redundant in the knew knowledge they shared. This was a kiss, and it was pressure and suction and fireworks that fizzled all the way down to ones toes. This is what love felt like at its most desperate. This was the way things might have been, somehow, if there had never been a James Moriarty to trap them in his web.

"Don't," John repeated at a whisper, hand still holding on behind his head. "If you go with him--"

"I am going with him. And you can hate me all you want for it, but at least I'll still be alive when you can bear to forgive me."

" _Don't!_ " 

Suddenly John's hand was empty, clasped around nothing but air without even the benefit of a normal hologram left for him to implore. Sherlock was gone, the metal diamond powering down in the air and falling to the ground where Sherlock's body had been only a moment before.

"Well, I'd better be off," Moriarty said, all but dancing towards the doorway with a victorious smile and a laugh in his voice. "Hate to leave him waiting. See you around, Johnny Boy."

With a rage unimaginable, John charged like a wild thing at the villainous hologram, a roar on his tongue as he threw himself at the monster that mocked him with undeserving pleasure. His arms stretched to grab him but took hold of nothing, his body sailing through as though he were nothing but air--nothing but light--and with a rib-cracking crunch slammed into the opposite wall. John couldn't breath, could see nothing but stars and white halos as pain blocked out all other senses.

With one last disapproving tisk, Moriarty opened the hotel room door and closed it behind him, another murder scene well played and his pawns at all times disposable.


	12. Chapter 12

John ran. It was the only way to stop this; the only way to stop _him_. John ran until his legs couldn't carry him and even then, after crashing to the ground in a rolling heap of worn limbs, John forced himself up and off again without a single thought about the flesh left on the concrete or the blood seeping through his clothes. He didn't even feel it. Outside the panic bursting through him, John felt nothing. All emotions were pushed outside of him like rainclouds, persistent in their pursuit and inevitable in their final downpour. But if he could get there, if he could make it not true, then at least he wouldn't weather it alone. All things could wait except for this. Logically it had been too late before he'd even began but logic, like emotion, could fuck off for now. Regardless of futility, John was going to run.

He could not get the doors to the Black Manta open fast enough. He mistyped his entry code twice, practically squeezed himself in with no patience spared an automatic ramp, and fell into two separate walls as his feet faltered on corners taken far too quickly and without care. He knocked over the chair at the hologram terminal in his haste, hands shaking almost too hard to punch in the commands through the console. The screen was a complicated mess of protocols but the message across the top was easy enough to decipher: No Program Found; Please Load Hologram Data to Begin. The sound that ripped itself from John's throat wasn't a conscious utterance and echoed in the empty room like the wet gurgle of a drowning man. He'd taken the files remotely and left nothing behind. Sherlock was gone. John could do nothing. And no one, not even Mycroft, could get Sherlock back.

John screamed. The sound was so loud, so forceful, it shattered through his lungs and scraped through his throat like a line of barbwire drawn up from his gut. He just kept screaming. If he stopped the whole world might disappear as though the breath from his tired lungs was the sole source of air in the universe, completely dependent on his snotty howls to sustain even a hint of life. His fists connected over and over and over again with console, the crunch of bones and the echo of metal sheeting both nothing compared to the deafening wail that accompanied their frenzied knocks. Each inarticulate shriek was just as powerful as the last with no deterioration in their intensity even as they continued to prove fruitless in relief. It didn't matter--he wasn't stuck screaming on the floor of the technical bay because he thought it might somehow make things better. There was nothing else he _could_ do, his whole body overtaken by something far more primal than the understanding of futility or harm. His voice cracked, he choked on spit, he wretched on swallowed air. The soul proved far more dramatic in its death throes than the body could ever despair. This was the sound of all resolve breaking. This was a man reduced to dust.

There would be no one to overhear. They'd all embarked on their own pursuits of rest and relaxation. They'd all gone their separate ways to wait until the dawn to meet and talk of what came next. What came next? John had no idea; couldn't even being to think. Nothing came next as far as he was concerned. Put him in prison for the murder of Sherlock Holmes, drag his entrails out through his urethra for delivering all that was left into the hands of the man who destroyed them both. No torture was undeserving. He'd murdered Sherlock. His hands had touched his skin and been awash in his blood. He'd heard him speak with his own voice and carved a hole in his throat to sever the cords and hack into his spine. Moriarty had promised a quick death and John had made sure ever second of it was filled with pain and fear with every mindless slash. He didn't deserve mercy or the freedom gifted with his pardon. John deserved the pain that splintered through his entire body. And more. Because he'd done it again: he'd been stupid enough to be manipulated by Moriarty into delivering to him everything he wanted at Sherlock's expense.

He hadn't even gotten to apologize for their fight. For being an asshole. For being too afraid to love him as he was.

There was nothing in all the universe so wonderful that John Watson couldn't fuck it up.

Cheeks scabbed in wet redness and screams little more than whimpering cries, John lost consciousness on the tech bay floor dreaming of nothing short of his own worthless demise.

\---

"John?"

The voice was far away and yet banging against his consciousness with a heavy mallet that rippled the space around him in undulating waves. He didn't want to wake up. There was a world out there behind his eyelids that he did not want to deal with. So what if it made him a coward? He still felt too raw though life it seemed had no issues when it came to consuming him. 

John peeked his eyes open with curiosity all the same. He wasn't on the floor anymore. He wasn't even still in the technical bay. The lights overhead were bright and the padded surface he laid on was elevated to the man's waist that stood at his bedside. This was the medical bay. They'd found him and they'd moved him. John wondered what else they'd had time to discover since someone came back to the ship.

"John?" Lestrade called again, his voice much more distinguishable from noise now that the captain had begun to focus on the world once more. "John, do you know where you are?"

There was something about the question that made John's skin crawl. "Yes," he said, but did not articulate further. 

"Do you remember what happened?"

The wince was automatic, as was the cold sweat that covered his body. John remembered all too well what had happened, and even the parts he would never remember were now defined to a certain clarity. Remembering wasn't the issue; remembering was the _problem_. The sooner he could forget it all the better. The sooner he forgot _him_.

Lestrade's voice was hesitant but carried a surprising amount of anger half concealed under the pretense of concern. "You deleted Sherlock, John," he said, closed fist tapping against the bedside. "This have anything to do with the Sherlock we were here to find?"

"He wasn't real."

"Don't even start that," he all but snarled. John had never heard him this angry before. "That hologram was as real as--"

"The other Sherlock wasn't Sherlock," John clarified, swallowing hard on the taste of his voice as he uttered that painful name. "He was Moriarty. It was a trap all along."

The frustrated fist against his bedside stilled. Whatever preconceptions Lestrade had held were unraveling in John's wakefulness, leaving behind unbundled threads that all derived from fact but had no pattern to follow. John wouldn't have needed his eyes open to read the expression on his friend's face. He'd thought John had done something unspeakable when left alone and unguarded. He didn't trust him. This didn't help.

"What happened, John?" he asked, less angry but still harboring hurt.

John covered his eyes with his hand to block out the light and grant his own pain some privacy under the pink shade of his palm. "Moriarty knows how to make a hologram solid. He wanted Sherlock to join him in some campaign against Commissioner Holmes. Promised him he could feel alive again if he did. And Sherlock went with him."

"So he still exists?"

"With Moriarty."

The security officer was relieved nonetheless. He let out a heavy breath, tucking his head to either side as he let the tension roll through him. "I thought you'd terminated him," he admitted, though the accusation had been there all along.

John shook his head. "No. Just killed him." He let his hand fall and his eyes draw fully open as he forced himself to face more than just the guilt the others held him to. "I did, you know. Moriarty explained. I was the man who murdered him." He put both wrists out, side by side. "Aren't you going to arrest me?"

It was the lack of surprise that was most painful. Lestrade hardly flinched as he leaned his own hands against the raised bed, head hanging down though it did little to hide his face. "You were pardoned," he said simply. 

"New information. Hell, I'll write and sign the confession."

"That's not how the justice system works, John," Lestrade all but reprimanded. It was easy to see he'd never really discarded the idea that John was implicit in the murder. It had been a pardon, after all, not a ruling of innocence. He'd been forgiven--not absolved--of the crime. Lestrade wasn't an idiot; he knew the evidence against him. He took him seriously, and at least there was respect shown in that. "I'm not going to punish you just to ease your conscious," he said, showing further signs of astuteness. "Whatever you're not telling me, we both know you've never in your life wanted to harm Sherlock. So how about we forget who's at fault for what just now and you start off by telling me something that's actually important to the situation. Where is Moriarty? Where did you meet? How did he get Sherlock?"

John thought for a moment then shook his head. "No."

"No?"

"Get in touch with the Proteus," he ordered instead, forcing himself to sit up in bed though he at once felt the scrapes and bumps he'd taken in his tumble through Deimos's streets. "Tell the commissioner I need to speak with him."

Lestrade's scowl made him look ten years older. "So that's how it's going to be, hm?"

John took a deep breath. "I want his side of the story first," he explained, though it said very little when he kept Moriarty's version to himself.

The security officer stood up, arms crossing over his chest as he looked down on him in all meanings of the phrase. "Right. Sure," he said, stepping over towards the door. "Just remember what happened the last time you thought you didn't need the help of your crew."

"I have nothing left to lose, Greg," John called after him, fists clenched at his sides.

Lestrade shook his head, looking back at him over his shoulder as he left the room. "And that's what makes you a loser."


	13. Chapter 13

"Why didn't you warn us?"

Commissioner Holmes hardly looked up from his desk, the air of importance that surrounded him still comfortably in place. "About what?" he asked, forehead wrinkled on raised brows as he tapped at screens and settled back in his leather chair, fingers steepled at his chin.

John was light-years past done. His face was stubbled, he hadn't showered, he'd changed clothes only out of necessity as his former attire had been patterned in small patches of blood. Docking had been easy but this meeting had been met with resistance, entire security details brought in to escort him and still waiting outside the door for his departure. Holmes would see him, yes, but there was always time made for him to remind John they were not equals, demonstrating in exercises of dominance where the balance of power lay. Everything the commissioner did was granted as privilege--an act of kindness. But Holmes was not a kind man and it was no privilege at all to be standing in his office once more. He owed John and John had every intention of maintaining his right to demand answers from the jackal on his throne. He owed John far more than a polity acquiesced audience bolstered by feigned ignorance and pomp. "Don't," he warned, not giving him an inch. "I'm not in the mood."

Holmes shrugged, hands unfolding to add flippancy to his further repose. "Unless you tell me what it is I'm meant to have told you, how can I possibly answer your question?" he asked, words like pieces on a chessboard placed to gauge intent as much as advance towards a goal.

John laughed, the hollow notes of humor sour on his tongue. "More like there's plenty you never said and you'd rather not let go of more secrets than you need to." He placed his palms on the desk, leaning in to oppress within his shadow. "Fine. You want a bone? Here's your bone. I met Moriarty on Deimos. He's a hologram. He's a _tangible_ hologram. And on his way to universal power, he's directly targeting _you_. Any of this surprising or should I take it by your blank expression that you knew all along?" 

His expression wasn't simply blank, it was cold like stone. Not a single shred of evidence was allowed to slip past his mask of unbothered superiority. No surprise. No curiosity. No attempt to lie and say it wasn't true. His high forehead and beak-like nose made him look like a predatory bird just watching and waiting for him to make a mistake before swooping in silently for the kill.

John smiled, shaking his head. Nearly above all else, he had wanted this part to be untrue. "You _knew_ and you delivered your _brother_ right into his hands. Is this what all that distance was about? You never wanted to meet or accept him because he was conceived as Moriarty's tool from the start and you knew you'd be sending him to an uncertain fate? I may be a violently repressed jackass but _you_ , sir, are the most reprehensible, double-barreled, smeg-dribbling arsehole I have ever met."

"Are you finished?" he asked, his small eyes intense in their dark stare.

"I could call you a fetid splodge of congealed baboon vomit while I'm at it but no, sure, I'm done."

Holmes half glared with annoyance, his arched brows drawing to a point as he slowly sat up, elbows resting on his desk with steepled fingers yet again below his thin lips. "You're a very stupid man if you think this sort of behavior is at all acceptable. Much easier for me to just have you scanned for any pertinent information."

" _Scan me!_ " he ordered, slamming his palms against the expensive, dark wood. "I _want_ you to! I want you to see the way your brother trembled when he found out he could touch again for the first time. I want you to hear his resignation and know he was never just a system adhering to its program. You used him and threw him out there specifically to draw Moriarty out and you never once warned us about what he was and what his interest might have been in Sherlock. The Black Manta was just your delivery service!"

"You choose to believe in a dangerous line of thinking. I cannot. My brother is dead and what remains was created for functionality, not sentiment," the commissioner corrected, though within it sat the heavy weight of admission and responsibility. There were less noble ways to admit guilt but few that carried less remorse. 

John's hands rolled into fists. "So you send him out there, make it obvious he's looking for Moriarty in order to get his attention, and hand him over thinking you can fight this fire with fire." He shoved himself away from the desk, not sure he had the self-restraint not to haul off and punch him if the distance allowed. "I hate you for making me side with Moriarty on this," he said through gritted teeth. "At least that bastard understands what real humanity is."

"Real humanity is flesh and bone, Dr. Watson," Holmes corrected as he stood. "All else is imitation. There can be no other acceptable definition."

"Why not?"

The commissioner's deep breath strained against the top breast buttons of his vest. He let his fingers trail along the deep wood as he rounded his desk, his height an added metric in maintaining control and instilling a sense of importance about his person. It had worked once upon a time. John could remember the first time he'd met the man, strapped to a wheelchair, still a prisoner and desperate for anyone to believe him. Holmes had been an austere giant back in those days, a pillar for him to cling to in hope when all else was falling apart. It seemed so much more fitting now that Lady Death had introduced them both. For all his stature and foreboding glares, John only saw a middle-aged imposter ruling from a shadowed lair like the king of Hades himself.

"All societies require death," he explained, voice pitched as though he were speaking to a child. "Tyrants must fall and martyrs must be made. Can you imagine it? Life after death with all the pleasures of life included, no old age, no illness, the future of the human race for all eternity with no expiration date. It would change everything. And not for the better. Reinventing life is not an option. Machines must always be machines and have their limitations or else chaos ensues. Perpetual life is as impossible to achieve as perpetual motion. There must always be entropy; decay is inevitable. What you believe in goes against natural order and as commissioner I must uphold that order above personal interests."

John continued to grit his teeth, hands vibrating in fatigue as he held them closed in fists. "Is that why we fight the Simulants? Because they blur that line between machine and man?"

"We fight them because we must," Holmes said simply.

Such simplicities had no place between them anymore. John shook his head, licking the salt from his lips as he stood his ground in front of the powerful man. "Moriarty said he could end the war with his hologram technology. Call me crazy, but I don't think he meant by killing them off with our own hologram soldiers. He was arming them; he's on their side. Why do they share a common enemy, Holmes?"

The commissioner looked aside with disinterest, his hands folding into his front pockets. "You really think such information is of any value to anyone?" he asked, not avoiding the question but certainly not jumping at the chance to explain.

John leaned in close. "What are the Simulants," he demanded clearly, not leaving any avenue available by which the commissioner could misunderstand his query as something arguably trite. 

There was a long stretch of quiet in which John felt he might have to be much more insistent if he wanted his answers. Holmes seemed to use his silence as a measure for how difficult the captain could make his life one way or another. John was fueled by suspicion and rage, neither of which had any focus but were ready to be armed against resistance. He was going to find everything out whether by force or voiced request. Convinced by either mercy or curiosity, the commissioner seemed to choose disclosure over false claims of ignorance. 

"They are the first men and women contracted out to work in space," he began, leaning against his desk's corner with starlight from the large window reflecting against his nose. "Conditions were hazardous, waivers signed, corporations left to manage their employees as was most befitting. Unregulated. We forget too often what the greed of man can do. Bottom lines are all too often more important than human lives. They were cheap labor and therefore their employers made cheap repairs. Injuries were fixed with what was at hand--most often machine parts. These men and women had no choice in their treatment; they were stuck in space with no options but those their employers gave them and no way to call for help. So bit by bit they were patched up with metal and wires until their anger grew stronger than their past resolve.

Simulants aren't trying to destroy all of mankind, John. They're trying to keep us contained to the inner solar system. The galaxy is too big and corporate interests too inflated to trust further endeavors across the Solar system. They attack mining installations and outposts in an attempt to make the costs and risks of working in deep space outweigh the benefits of resource mining. They're not insane as much as they are desperate and bitter. Everything else is speculation allowed to circulate as fact."

John tried to keep his breathing even, his nostrils flaring with each heated breath. "If that's true, why are we fighting them instead of talking to them?" he demanded, not allowing anything but the reptilian part of his conscious mind to focus on the meaning of his words.

Holmes shrugged, nonchalant. "Because we can't. In their desperation, they started a war. While they could do nothing against their employers, the corporations that destroyed their humanity weren't nearly as isolated or helpless. Regardless of who's at fault, corporate propaganda has villainized Simulants to the point that any attempt at a peaceful resolution would cause an uprising. People are terrified of them, united against them. And I think you can imagine how forthcoming the businesses themselves are in admissions of personal guilt. Every last one of them deny any wrongdoing. And they always will. So the only justice for Simulants is war and our only course of action is to eradicate them in turn."

"It's still going on, isn't it?" John asked, trying not to remember the deaths he'd seen and caused. "There are still outposts treating people like disposable parts and making more Simulants, aren't there?"

"Empires have always been built on the backs of slaves," Holmes said.

John laughed just to relieve the stress on his chest. "And you've known all about it."

"We cannot keep an eye on everyone. Every time we place someone on an installation to keep an eye on things, the reports come back glowingly positive and the watchman's bank account grows substantially with kindly donations from their host corporations. Silence and cooperation are commodities and even with the best of intentions, atrocities will always happen when greed exceeds compassion."

"So you just... let the corporations continue to operate in space and even help them deal with Simulant--with _human_ retaliation," John shouted.

The commission rolled his eyes, unmoved by the things he already knew. "Where do you think we get the materials to create our stations and ships? We can't operate in space without their business. These are necessary evils in the expansion of the human race across the galaxy. Eventually we will grow to be more mindful of human resources but for now space is a savage place that will remain primarily lawless until it can no longer function as such."

"Meanwhile the bastards who did this get rich and bloated, their power invests in their own protection, and our governing forces are crippled in a tug-a-war of supply and demand." John took a few steps back, the will to pummel the powerful man growing with each thoughtless word and gesture with which he spoke. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm beginning to side with Moriarty on all this."

"Moriarty wants to dictate mankind whereas the corporations battle with each other in a capitalistic parliament. I'd much rather deal with competing forces than bow to an ultimate ruler, especially one who would reign eternal," Holmes said, for the first time seeming to warm with a spark of passion in light of an alternative power being brought to mind.

"He really could end this war," John insisted.

"And start a new war against everyone who stands for freedom and the rights of mankind to push its boundaries and explore." It was clear the commissioner had had enough of their talk, his exasperation no longer hinted and his annoyance made physically obvious as his neck grew red with warmth. "If totalitarianism would solve this, I'd have appointed a dictator. But it won't. We like to entertain the idea that we are a civilized society but we will always be the creatures that crawled from the deserts with clubs and destroyed everything we saw, even those that looked like ourselves."

John stared at him, not sure in who's presence he felt more repulsed. Moriarty had used John to commit Sherlock's murder but Holmes had used him too in the transportation and delivery of his brother into his enemy's hands in hope he'd align himself to the family cause. Holmes cared nothing for the pain and fear and love that Sherlock felt or that anyone else might feel for him outside his ability to manipulate others based on those basic emotions. He was cold and heartless in the name of the greater good where Moriarty was compassionate and selfish in the name of his own interests. They were two sides of a rigged coin that could only lead its user to lose.

The commissioner smiled thinly, standing straight in John's quieted resolve. "You believe yourself to be a monster in a world of innocents but in reality, John, there is nothing more monstrous than humanity itself. The only difference is that when you look in the mirror, you see the horns. The rest of us prefer to pretend they aren't there." He removed his hands from his pockets, choosing instead to fold them at his chest. "So," he asked, "what will you do now?"

"Nothing," John replied.

"Nothing?"

"My options are fight you or fight Moriarty. I can't do either. So I'm not going to do anything. I refuse to pick sides. But I want to make one thing abundantly clear," he said, and with a swift left hook landed Holmes on the defensive, a hearty shove laying him out on his desk while John hunched over him, another hit smashing in his nose while his weight pinned the commissioner down. The door to the office swung open, armed guards rushing into his aid. "I _loved_ him, you ignorant jackass," John spat, holding on even as men fought to pull him off. "He's still your brother! Moriarty can go fuck himself but I _will_ help Sherlock do whatever he must!"

The butt of a gun smashed into John's head and with its impact came a loosening of his fingers which the armed guards took full charge of. They ripped him from the commissioner's chest, shoving him to the ground while metal bracelets wound their way around his wrists, both knees and hands holding him down. John didn't struggle. He wasn't going to get away and he knew it. This wouldn't be the first time he met incarceration with intrigue rather than with dread. There was nothing Holmes could take from him that he didn't feel he'd already lost. But that bleeding face and the still warm blood washing over his fingers gave John a sense of accomplishment that would sustain him for as long as it took. 

Hauled to his feet and dragged to the detention level, John could not hide the smirk on his face as the corridors of the Proteus parted for him and his security entourage.


	14. Chapter 14

John remembered the detention cells on the Proteus fondly. They were roomy compared to those he'd sat in on the Endeavor 1, and the pristine, military presentation that permeated the governing vessel extended even there where few had sat before. Mattresses were still fresh, pillows hardly broken in, sheets the same durable fiber blend that John remembered from his service days. It was all boring white but boredom was a way of life and not just an accented means of being. One didn't expect to be entertained as they waited to be fined or sentenced. So John sat in silence, altered-mass cuffs on his wrists, and waited still in patience as the hours ticked on by.

And he didn't once regret it. Not once. Even given a thousand hours to sit in isolation, he would never regret the feel of that smug bastard's teeth against his fist. He'd earned that right just as surely as the man had earned the punch. So long as no one was arguing the fact, John had no trouble sitting where he was told and waiting for an unspecified amount of time to be allowed back out. He wasn't in a hurry; he had nowhere to go. Sitting in a cell sounded as good an option as any. It did him a favor, in many regards, by giving him inactive time to think. On the Black Manta there'd been too much chaos in his mind to do more than dwell on the secrets he believed had been kept from him. Now he had the clarity to feel Sherlock's absence. Now he possessed the opportunity to feel anger at the man who left him behind. And it felt good to feel something greater than the grief and numbness of before. He was pissed off and anger had always been a more comfortable place to dwell. Holmes had betrayed them, Sherlock had abandoned him, and fighting the victims of corporate greed had given him the PTSD that got him involved in the whole mess in the first place. His strings may have been long but he was still nothing more than a marionette--the only solace in the fact that there were millions just like him. But there was only one Sherlock Holmes, and he'd been lucky enough to have been the opportune idiot made to murder him. But it didn't make him special or qualified to handle the scope of everything laid out before him. All it did was give him a reason to be angry, and in anger there was calm serenity.

John laid back, ankle resting on his raised knee as he stared at the blank ceiling like some far away portal to a much better time and place. Such a place was completely imaginary as there was nothing in his past that qualified as ideal, but he put Sherlock there--wherever _there_ was--and it was enough to pass the time.

It might have been hours or even days before the door to his cell was opened--they were all the same to John. He didn't bother moving, feeling instead the cuffs on his wrists and ankles grow heavier as the electric barrier separated him from the side of the room with its door. Letting him out wouldn't require the barrier so expectations for release at this time were low. So he kept his eyes to the ceiling and hands crossed behind his head. The last thing he wanted to see was Holmes's bird-like face looking down on him so he did not even bother a curious side glance as he listened to the footsteps of someone entering with a renewed, restless fury rolling through his veins.

"You are, without a doubt, the stupidest man I have ever met."

The fury ebbed almost immediately as John turned his head to see Lestrade standing there on the other side of the glimmering barrier. He smirked slightly, always having respected the man's opinion. "Maybe," he said, no real reason to argue with sound logic and appraisal. 

Lestrade did not share in his outward attitude of perverse flippancy. "So this was the big plan, hm?" he asked, gesturing to the cell with outstretched hands. "Head to the Proteus and hard-knuckle the commissioner? Not sure exactly what this has to do with getting Moriarty but I'm sure you'll continue to not tell anyone."

John nodded, unmoved from his relaxed posture. "Pretty much."

The security officer glared at him, tendons in his neck popping with the tightness of his jaw. Then, on an exhale, the tension seemed to simply slip away, leaving only traces of anger in the tug of his brow and thinness of his lips. He was a professional, after all. He was trained to deal with people like John. John envied him that kind of composure though he relished in his own explosive nature from time to time. 

"You know they're sending you to a penal colony?" Lestrade asked at last, the flexing of his jaw showing more than simple irate annoyance. 

That certainly piqued John's interest. Legs uncrossed, he sat up on the bed, leaning forward with palms against the mattress's edge. "Since when?"

"You think these people need to adhere to their own laws?" Lestrade shook his head, his arms crossing in front of his chest as he looked away. "They have you down for attempted murder. That little stunt you pulled is being called a failed assassination. No trial, no sentencing hearing, just straight to Earth's moon for life. Congratulations."

"Thanks. I always wanted to be an enemy of the state."

"Will you take this seriously? _You're going away for life, John_ ," he shouted, as though volume alone would be able to hammer the facts into John's thick and clouded skull. 

It wasn't necessary. John had heard him. He understood. And he was only marginally surprised though the move seemed strangely sinister even from the man who employed Death. "The only difference that man ever made to my sentencing was to give me the illusion of freedom," he said, shrugging with forced nonchalance. "I'd just as soon sit in an actual cell than run around the solar system on a leash. Regardless of how it looks, out there is no different from in here."

"Yeah, well 'in here' doesn't help Sherlock."

John managed to keep from flinching though the muscle of his right cheek twinged with the effort. "Being out there wouldn't either. At the very least, he doesn't have to worry about me anymore. We'll never be at opposite ends of the battlefield. Whatever side he chooses, I'm out of the way."

Lestrade shook his head, his face pinched with disbelief. "So you're just giving up?" he asked, the expected answer blatantly hanging in the air.

"I am in way over my head and always have been. I need Sherlock. I'm not smart enough to figure this all out on my own."

"You didn't have to do anything alone--you _chose_ for it to be this way. You always had the crew," Lestrade insisted, his anger rising once more. People like John were surly why the man had turned to premature grey. Even a cool kettle can come to boil with enough pressure kept inside. 

John shook his head lazily, finding himself unwilling to counter rage with rage. He was right, after all--he had often kept the crew in the dark. If Lestrade meant to make him feel guilty, though, he had missed the mark by a mile. John had absolutely no desire to share the knowledge he had with the others. Ignorance was better than impotence. Knowing wouldn't let them fix things, let them help matters, let them aid in a solution that would mend the galaxy. Knowing that the notions of good guys and bad guys were wholly subjective and dependent solely on perception were things everyone thought they already knew but were never really ready to confront and understand. He'd spared them that turmoil at the very least with his unfortunate actions. They could still feel righteous in killing Simulants when confrontations inevitably happened, and still have faith in the powers-that-be which, despite changing faces, would always be the same at their core. All he could do would be to sow seeds of unrest through conspiracy which would be made to be laughed at and ignored. Ignorance was indeed bliss and god help the men and women who wrote about them in history books to further mask the crimes of their current age of juvenile expansion.

"What did they do about the Black Manta now that I'm going away?" John asked, not changing the subject but diverting its focus. What happened before or was going to happen to him now was of little consequence. Lestrade and the others, however, still had lives worth living and a job to do. He didn't want to be the reason they were torn apart unfulfilled.

Lestrade looked at him silently for a moment then shook his head, one hand cupping along the back of his own neck. "I petitioned to take over. The commissioner agreed."

"Great," John said, and found that he actually meant it. "Congratulations. I'm sure you'll find him."

"Moriarty? Or Sherlock?"

John pursed his lips and pushed up off the mattress, pacing closer to the electric divide as his hands flexed in irritation at his sides. On the right side of a wrong or not, it was personal between him and Moriarty. And as much sympathy as John had for the Simulants, his regard for Moriarty was founded in unshakable despise. "If you find one, you'll find the other. Just... don't forget; you're not dealing with some guy you can shoot down to save the day. Taking down one hologram projection unit doesn't take down the man. You have to find his base and destroy his core programming if you're ever going to get rid of him. And we don't know that Moriarty shares Sherlock's dislike of personal copies. Could be looking at a hydra defense. So... yeah. Be careful."

Lestrade's shoulders fell, head shaking side to side. "You should have been with us, John," he lamented, lips still held thin with his own deserved sense of betrayal. 

"If Sherlock's working for Moriarty, whether because he chooses to or has no other choice, it would mean I'd be forced to work against you and everyone else I've ever fought beside. I won't go against him, Greg. I trust him too much to do what's right."

"So instead you've convinced the commissioner you're a murdering psychopath."

"Honestly, I didn't even have to try." John smiled, finding the expression much more natural in the presence of a friend. This was goodbye after all. Probably for good. He might have earned his place in memory as a terrible captain and a shit friend, but comrades were still comrades in the end. There were a lot of memories to pay homage to in their final parting. "Take care of yourself. And the rest. You're much better suited to it than I ever was. I'm sure you'll find Moriarty. And when you do... well, if you see Sherlock, tell him apologies will have to wait."

Lestrade let his head hang slightly, his face torn between disbelief and that closed-off place all faces find when they're trying to keep everything at bay. "You're a stubborn, stupid man, John," he said, insults hiding the threat of sentiment.

"You're not wrong," John agreed, reciprocating the unsaid just alike.

The security officer chuckled briefly, more breath than sound as his lips let slip a small smile and he stood straighter behind the barrier. "I know some guys who work the lunar penal colony," he said. "Good men. I'll drop in a good word for you."

"Great. I'm sure a glowing personal reference will change their minds about the whole violent criminal aspect," John replied, sarcasm never far away, especially in uncomfortable moments of which goodbyes were one amongst.

Lestrade's tired sigh was a sound he'd not soon forget. "Not all of us revel in misery," he said, the pinch returning to his brow that broadcast worry above resignation.

"This isn't misery," John corrected. "In the scheme of things, this is damn near giddy, honestly. I mean, I managed to get so far under the commissioner's skin that he's hiding me away under lock and key. So no matter what he thought Sherlock and I were worth before, we've both proven him wrong."

Lestrade shook his head again, hands planted firmly on his hips. "I wish to Christ I knew what you were talking about."

John shrugged. "Consider it all the more reason to find Moriarty."

"Or more reason to believe you might actually be mad," Lestrade replied, more distance made with feigned indifference. They both knew this language, though. All men did. It didn't matter what was said one way or the other. Lestrade had come to see him. That was all the context needed.

He didn't stay long. Goodbyes were painful when dragged out even to the least of friends. And while they weren't close, John had never thought to consider him as anything less than a trustworthy companion he'd enjoyed spending time around. They had been friends. That wasn't something he'd had much experience within the past. He didn't hold out much hope for the future either.

They disengaged the protective wall as soon as the door was closed behind him, a tray of food sliding through the door's letterbox hole as it seemed mealtime had been interrupted by the visit. Boxed water and bread with a paper sheath of squeezable butter.

John let it sit there, not certain he should really trust anything while on board, and returned to his stiff mattress and its uninteresting display of a pristine, white painted ceiling and its seamless, boring view.


	15. Chapter 15

Her name was apparently Anthea but John insisted he still call her Death. He hadn't realized how fitting the name had been at the time and after a year didn't feel inclined to change it. Flowers reminded him of graves, anyway. Death's red stained lips were little more than two fresh petals on a wilted stem pruned for Holmes' sanctified greater good. Just another tool; just a servant of the gods. And the powers that be were cruel deities indeed with all the faults of the same humanity they neither cared for nor served.

Standing in the corridor flanked by armed men, Death was as beautiful as John remembered in her smartly cut A-line suit. But there were few things he wanted to see less of than a fellow instrument in the commissioner's plots. He'd have rather a stranger to the cold, familiar face of the woman who always heralded change. She didn't smile. She hardly looked up. As soon as John's own armed guards met to exchange with her accompanying force, her heels began their click-clock against the hard floors down the hallway with the unspoken expectation to be followed. And John did, wrist secured heavily enough to pull at his neck and shoulders, as they continued on their way towards the equally secured hanger bay. Prisoner transfer didn't normally require the right-hand operative of the commissioner to be present, though. John watched her with keen interest as she noisily lead the way.

It hadn't been that long since Lestrade had informed him of his sentencing. A few days. Maybe a week. His formal invitation to the lunar penal colony had been around the same time but time in general seemed to gloop in abstract ways around John since he'd first thrown a punch at commissioner Holmes. Time passed but it didn't really seem to include him in its passing. He was a bystander. A spectator. Nothing really seemed all that real without Sherlock there beside him. It could all be a dream for all the sense life made to him. Moments of pain or discomfort such as from the altered-mass cuffs were among the few that reminded him he was still very much alive. And now being on parade through the halls of the prestigious Proteus once more left only fond memories in place of worried expectation.

He half expected to find himself being lead back to speak to Holmes but their route remained true to the signs posted on the walls. They passed through all the right security checkpoints, Death presented all the right data for prisoner transport, and in the end John did indeed find himself standing before a high-security passenger ship with armed guards already waiting at the ramp. It was exactly as it had been promised to be outside Death's unnecessary accompaniment. John figured he understood that part too now, though. She was the commissioner's eyes and ears where he could not stand himself. The bastard was probably getting live updates, hoping to hear John beg for forgiveness or offer some last-ditch promise to help instead. No deal. John wasn't afraid. He was a lot of things--crazy, for instance, sprang to mind--but he was not anywhere close to feeling fear even with a very clear picture of his future residing on the hanger floor with rifles crossing their chests.

"I'm sorry it had to be this way, John," Death said, the only indication that they were her own words and not Holmes's in the lift of he eyes from the electronic pad in her grasp.

John kept his confident smirk in place, his guards standing still and allowing for a short exchange so long as Death did not press them to hurry him off. "I'm sure you are," he said, shaking his head as he eyed the guarded ship. "Can't say I agree. I mean, I'd rather have gotten a bit more in than a few cheap shots if I'd known I'd end up in the lunar colony but I'd rather just about anything to helping that self-righteous prick."

"But you are helping him," she corrected. Her tone sent shivers down John's spine. "The fact of the matter is, John, that it is much easier to find something after you have lured it out into the open. Moriarty has no outside connections to target but, as you pointed out, Sherlock does." She frowned slightly, blue eyes narrow despite the victorious nature of her words. "Moriarty has been breaking into the penal colony and abducting jailed scientists for almost three years now. And, as you know, word is out that you will very soon be detained there. How long do you think it will take before Sherlock comes for you?"

John was wrong. He was afraid. And one of these days he was going to learn not to underestimate the commissioner and the depths to which he'd go to fulfill his purposes. He all but growled as he stepped closer, strong hands holding him back in warning as he tested the limits of his approach. "He'll see right through it. He'll know it's a trap."

"You think that will stop him?"

No. 

John clenched his fists. "Regardless, I don't imagine Moriarty's going to grant him the freedom to do as he pleases so soon after taking him away."

"Which is why Mr. Holmes has decided to put you under lock and key for an indeterminate amount of time," Death explained. And it was so obvious that it hurt. Attempted murder because he threw a punch? Holmes wasn't any more afraid of John than he was the lint in his belly button. It was all just means to keeping tabs on the only link to Sherlock that existed--the only link to _Moriarty_ he could exploit. 

And there John was, cuffed and mere yards away from the transport ship that would put him exactly where the commissioner wanted him to be and exactly where he dreaded: opposite Sherlock. And the idiot would come. And Moriarty, the only side that saw value in a hologram's life, surely had the means to delete him should his transceiver fall into an unfavorable grasp. And there was nothing John could do about it, no possible means to stop Holmes from using him to interfere except for _one_.

John pursed his lips, his head shaking side to side as he hummed on the darkest of humors. "He's putting me away so he'll know exactly where I am at all times should Sherlock come for me. Fine. That's just fine. I can play games too. It can be a race. Can Holmes trap his brother before I commit suicide, I wonder? I'm going to just put it out there that my life up to this point has been one hell of _fucking shitfest_ and I really don't hold out much hope for the commissioner's odds."

Death paused, her blue eyes wide and unblinking. "You'd end your life out of something as petty as spite?" she asked, her doubt lingering in the tone of her voice.

"I will not be used against Sherlock."

"You don't have a choice," she assured him.

Oh, but how she was wrong. In prison, perhaps, his options would be slim. They could put him on suicide watch and keep him caged in such a way as to try and preserve his life. They could put him in a coma and feed him through tubes to try and take every ounce of agency away from him and strip him of his ability to control his own path. But he wasn't in prison right now. Right now he was surrounded by armed guards and standing in the presence of a seemingly defenseless businesswoman. And right now he was desperate enough not to give a single, solitary fuck that this was going to be a very contemptible end.

The crest of his head caught her in the nose as he launched himself suddenly and violently towards Death. Then came the shouting. John felt hands grab him and he turned his attention to the guards instead, lashing out in every way possible, somehow managing to swing his heavy limbs enough to knock one man down while others shoved him to the floor. Guns were drawn, voices raised. John felt his face driven into the floor by sharp, percussive hits but refused to lie still. He bucked and tossed, struggling and screaming like someone possessed, trying to create an atmosphere of utter confusion and terror to incite some form of lethal force. He was never going to make it to the lunar colony. He was going to die right here. Out of spite? Maybe. But there were worse reasons to die. 

"Don't harm him!" Death shouted, the pain and blood from her nose making her voice muffled but still strong in the echoing hanger bay. John didn't care what orders she gave them, his own intentions were set. He could force them to take him seriously; he could limit their options if pressed. When they stopped hitting him and focused on holding him down, it was just a matter of trashing till personal risk outweighed such orders. The altered-mass cuffs were practically breaking his ankles and wrists but the dead didn't feel pain and it would all be over soon enough.

"Contingency Delta!" she shouted again. "Contingency Delta! _Delta_!" 

John hadn't a care for what the silly words meant. He struggled to get closer to her, intent on further harm, and felt the pain long before he heard the sound of close-range gunfire. 

"Don't!" her voice rang out one last time, panic charging it like a scream.

And then nothing. 

Silence.

Blackness and void.

John felt the warmth of blood again and then felt nothing at all.


	16. Chapter 16

TWO YEARS LATER

John flipped the on switch to his electric kettle before stomping off towards his room again to find some suitable trousers in the "mostly clean" pile by the door. He should have done the laundry two days ago. The hamper was overflowing with the bits he hadn't the heart to re-wear while the discarded mounds of cardigans and jumpers that might last a few more days were dwindling towards the floorboards. He'd worn black trousers and a red cardigan the day before so he could probably get away with black and green today. Airing out his khakis might even get him to the weekend if he dug in towards the back of his wardrobe for button downs lost from rotation that might draw attention away from the rest. Either way, he was a slob. Promises to get his act together at the week's end were mostly empty though well intentioned. There simply wasn't enough time to be bored, busy _and_ anxious all while maintaining a London flat on his own. Perhaps he'd settle on just bored the next time around and find some comfort in sorting by fiber, knit, and color. In the meantime, it was black slacks and green jumpers and socks just a day past crispy.

Sherlock Holmes would have been appalled.

John dabbed cologne in all the usual spots, plus an extra dab in the crease of his clothes that folded under his pits. Just a precaution. The examination rooms could be a bit warm, after all, even in the wintery months. John didn't bother with the bit of stubble on his chin and his hair was short enough to easily obey a quick raking with a bristled brush. He was ready before the water'd boiled, shoes laced and tie tucked in. Another day, another shift, another pointless foray. He sighed on his way back to the countertop where steam sang quietly from the kettle's spout and fogged the lines of blue tile set against the wall behind.

Two years. Two years, three months, and eight days if he was going to be anal about it. He'd never intended to keep track but the calendar on the cluttered wall that had been purchased for him with the best of intentions remained hanging above the fold-out table with the initial year and month still on display. The hour of his interview at the surgery had been written in for him on the date after the one on which he'd moved in, the feminine handwriting gently looping along a six. He'd never used it himself and never cared to update it at the year's end. The math from there was easy enough. So it had been two years, three months, and eight days since he'd last been on the Proteus, and probably two years and four months since he'd last seen Sherlock. For the best, really, he told himself. That didn't mean that every day there wasn't some small glimmer of hope. If the laundry on the floor and the stubble on his chin said anything, though, it was that his expectations were low to nonexistent after two years, three months, and eight boring days living the life he'd fled from once long ago with all its predictable displays. 

He put the boiling water in a thermos over a sunken parcel of tea then went about pulling on jacket, scarf, and gloves before making his way out the door of his flat to the busy streets of London below. January was bitter cold, making his eyes water with the first brush of chilled air, doing his cheeks no favors at all as dampness helped chap their soon-to-be rosy crests. It felt as though he could actually feel his eyes freezing over, as though frost would form before his vision and crystallize like a cataract to blind him with the ice. Instead his eyes just leaked and he hunkered down into the fold of his scarf. The warm thermos in his gloved hand imparted some minor comfort as he walked the concrete path but the insistence of January weighed him down all the same as he milled along with the others starting their day.

London. Earth. Weather. He waved to the woman in the window of the flat across the street, a gesture never returned no matter who was spying on him through that post that day. Still, he took some consolation in the fact that as boring and pointless as his own life now was, the men and women charged to watch his every move were engaged in an even more pointless endeavor. It wasn't as though he did anything--as if he _could_ do anything. Still, they didn't have to be dicks about it. John always waved, somewhat pleased to let them know he still knew they were there. He suspected some of the regulars on the underground to be in on it as well, nearly certain at least two of his patients were though it was possible they were just lonely. He understood that feeling. It was part of what made him wave at windows. It was part of why he bothered with anything at all.

Growing up, London had seemed like such a big place. Tall buildings, celebrities, the seat of government all cloistered into ancient streets and alleyways. Anything seemed big to a boy growing up in a village to the west, though. London had been a place where dreams really happened. John had believed in that up until his first voyage into space. After that, London was just another city on Earth with your average interstellar port, a place to stop off at before leaping into the stars. Now he wasn't allowed within two hundred meters of any port or docking facility. London wasn't much more than a dusty relic without the expectation of leaving or coming back. It was odd to think, though, that at one time or another, he and Sherlock might have been on the same train or both stood in the underground together as strangers. At one time, it might have been Sherlock sat across from him amongst the jostle of commuters, their eyes politely never meeting, their lives separate and unmingled. It made him wonder about the people he saw now and what strange ways they could impact his life if they happened to look up and both say hello. It wasn't enough to try, though. He honestly didn't care. They weren't Sherlock and it was never going to be Sherlock sat there, curls bouncing with the carriage's sway. So it didn't matter. Just a passing thought. Something to consider as he traveled each day.

It took half an hour--or thereabouts--to reach the surgery. Already people were waiting to be seen for sniffles and coughs on a constant loop of seasonal complaints, the nursing staff sitting with antiseptic hand wash and tissues on hand with grimaces of fear of contagion pinching at their smiles. John nodded to them to be nice, making his way back to his office with the lingering cold stiffening his steps. He'd have liked a few minutes to settle in but the composition of hacks and sneezes were enough of a warning that such was not going to be the case. A few seconds, more like. Just long enough to get the figurative turnstile ready for the same diagnosis and prescription ad nauseum for the next seven hours at the least. Bored, busy and anxious for two years, three months, and eight smegging days. And in all honesty, the laundry probably wasn't going to be seen to today either. 

"John!" one of the nurses called, following him from the desk to his door as John searched through his pocket for his access pass. Her round blues eyes were large with inquisition as she hung by his side till he managed the door.

John patted his wallet against the electronic panel, the card inside registering enough to disengage the locks. "Hello, Mary," he said, shouldering his way past her as the door slid aside, thermos to the table as he worked off his gloves, his only respite in the absence of a patient folder in the nurse's hands. "Something you need?" he asked, continuing to slowly peel away the layers of his winter masque.

Mary stood near the door, her bulky jumper making her look like a summer squash. "Did you read the paper today?" she inquired, hands folded in front.

John shook his head. "Didn't have much time for it, really. Anything good?"

"Another scientist was broken out of the lunar penal colony. That makes three in the past six months."

"I'm surprised they even bother reporting on it anymore," John proclaimed, and took a seat at his desk to finally get the cap off his tea and enjoy a quick drink before the rush.

Mary remained in the doorway, her hands fidgeting in their woven grasp. "You don't think it's interesting?"

"Not really. Let me guess, Simulant sympathizers are rumored to be behind the breakout?" John scoffed, eyes rolling, not needing so much as a nod to inform him of how right he continued to be. "It's the same thing every time. It's not news, it's business as usual. I bet they even alluded to the possibility that the scientist is behind the rise of Simulants in the first place."

"You think otherwise?" Mary asked, pushing back a strand of short, blonde hair.

John sighed, taking a moment to sip his tea from the mug on his desk before turning his attention back towards the nurse. "They put you up to this?"

"Up to what?"

"Go ask crazy Dr. Watson about his mad conspiracy theories?" John shook his head, leaning back in his chair as he felt himself slowly thaw from the cold outside. "Tell them they can find a new way to haze the new girl. I'm done talking about what I know. No one believes it or wants to hear it anyway."

Mary frowned slightly. "I might," she said, her arched brows pitched with a mixture of concern and disappointment. 

It didn't matter. It wasn't a subject John felt like getting into today. "Who's my first patient?" he asked, downing as much of his tea as was possible, wanting to have something to savor in the last seconds before the day's repetitive cycle continued its trend.

Mary let it drop, looking out the door over her shoulder for a moment before responding to his request. "Mr. Greyson," she said. "Flu symptoms."

Of course it was. John sighed and put his mug down, giving in to the monotony with nothing left to stall. "Bring him in," he said, and made sure his thermos lid was screwed tightly shut.


	17. Chapter 17

John flipped the on switch to his electric kettle before stomping off towards his room again to find some suitable trousers in the "mostly clean" pile by the door. He should have done the laundry three days ago. The hamper was overflowing with the bits he hadn't the heart to re-wear while the discarded mounds of cardigans and jumpers that might last a few more days were scraps above the floorboards. He'd worn black trousers and a green cardigan the day before so he could probably get away with black and beige today. He needed to remember to air out his khakis if he wanted to make it to the weekend. He was already needing to dig in towards the back of his wardrobe for button downs that might draw attention away from the rest. He desperately needed to get his act together. In the meantime, it was black slacks and beige jumpers and socks two days past crispy.

He dabbed cologne in all the usual spots, plus an extra dab in the creases of his clothes. They could use the help. He ran a razor over his face and neck, cleaning up the bits of him he could while the rest of him felt wrinkled and shabby. At least his face and hair would look nice. He really needed to see to that laundry.

Shoes laced and tie tucked in, the hot water was waiting and steam already nothing more than a trickle as John moved back to the kitchen to pack his morning tea. Two years, three months, and nine days. He'd never intended to keep track but sometimes he did. He put the hot water in a thermos over a sunken parcel of tea and went about pulling on jacket, scarf, and gloves. He waved to the man in the window of the flat across the street. He walked to the station and road along the underground. He got to work. People sneezed, blew their noses and coughed. Another day like all the rest. Another day in hell.

John was looking forward to lunch if only for the chance to get out. Food was the closest thing to a change of pace as seemed to come into his life. He'd had a bite of pasta on Monday, and one of the nurses had brought in a bit of quiche the day before. A sandwich with a cup of soup on the side sounded like an excellent take on his midday reprieve. The hours of infected sinuses and bronchial inflammation could not pass quickly enough.

At a knock at his office door, John looked up and over to the slowly opening entrance, his notes for his last patient not yet complete but able to wait for a small interruption. They weren't exactly unique; everyone was coming down with more or less the same thing in varying degrees of severity. It was one of the reception nurses standing there but in her hand was a small brown bag rather than another patient's file. She closed the door behind her as she stepped inside with him, carefully placing her bagged item on his desk. "Brought you a little something to keep you warm," Mary said then took a comfortable lean against his desk's far end as she watched him unfold the bag's close.

John's forehead raised as he spied for himself a container of soup and a half sandwich inside from the shop around the corner. Lucky guess. He managed a frown anyway, pulling the contents out onto his desk. "Creative way of telling me I'm booked right through?"

"Dr. Free went home with flu," she said, leaning back against her palms. "You're the only one left. Sorry."

Not her fault. John sighed and popped the lid off his soup. Carrot and ginger--not his first choice but not unappetizing. He left the plastic wrapped spoon in the bag and put the container to his lips instead for a quick, efficient swallow. Not his first choice at all but it most certainly hit the spot. He nodded his thanks and continued to eat quickly, his time valuable with a waiting room full and only himself left to see them.

Mary stayed there, watching him quietly for a moment before idly straightening out her skirt over her crossed knee. "I sent you that article," she said, picking off a piece of lint and letting it fall away on the air. "The one from yesterday. About the scientist."

John frowned, licking soup from his lips as he peeled the paper off the half sandwich resting on his patient notes. "Oh. Right... okay. Um... there a particular reason why you want me to read it?"

"Just interested in what you think."

He very much doubted that. The staff had a history of sending the new hires to him with little crumbs to goad him with and questions to elicit his reproach. Not the most professional of work environments but seeing as they kept him on despite his reputation for being a nutter he didn't have much room to complain. He'd been lucky they'd rolled their eyes when he said he was being tracked my the government and that they continued to chortle at his claims of mass conspiracy. He hadn't expected it to be this way; armed as he was with information and given free rein to spread it without retaliation. That alone should have tipped him off. The commissioner would never be sloppy enough to put him somewhere where he could actually make a difference. He could talk all he wanted about Moriarty, the Simulants, and Commissioner Holmes's anti-advanced AI agenda and corporate coverup but in the end, they were just the ravings of a retired soldier who had seen one too many battles and left his senses scattered with the stars. An attraction. A modern curiosity. That made nurse Morstan the fifth new hire in his two years with the surgery to be sent to speak to crazy Dr. Watson. He'd stopped being insulted at the third young girl--the one Mary had recently replaced. He'd gotten over it after neighbors, newspapers, and every other journalistic approach he'd tried ended in the same rebuttal that thanked him for his service but scoffed at his intelligence. Insistence just made him seem more nuts. So instead John owned it, branded it, and did his best to cast doubt by being the most normal man in the face of the planet, albeit with an issue concerning laundry. Maybe someday someone would notice that he was completely and utterly sane when he spoke of conspiracies. Until then, such interactions were little more than the initiation into the fold. Until that day, he was little more than a talking point for the front desk.

John tore into his sandwich, hardly chewing the thick cheese and salty meat before swallowing it down and chasing it with more orange soup. "Let me guess," he began, heading off the usual with things already well known. "Microwave specialist? AI pioneer? Probably put away for unethical research or some bullshit like that? Am I close?"

"Quantum Physicists," Mary informed him, her smile thin but curled and pleased. "Ten years for unethical research."

John nodded, only surprised by the fact that people still doubted him when he was so often right. "Only ten years, hm? Must have worked out a deal. Well, just because the fish takes the bait doesn't mean it's swallowed the hook. Should have told Holmes where he could stick it while he had the chance. Man's dead. Probably won't ever even find the body. There anything else you particularly want to hear my insight on?"

"Why do you assume he's dead?" Mary asked.

That was probably the easiest question to field. "Because the people who took him don't need bodies weighing them down, especially not with the risk of tracers or any kind of tag system that could lead anyone to them. They're only interested in his mind and they have the technology to take care of what they rob him of in his murder. He's dead and they have his loyalty if he has any desire to go on existing."

"You're talking about holograms."

"Mm. Solid holograms, even. Completely illegal but one hundred percent real," John told her, deciding to just go ahead and go with the full crazy. It was as good as any other stress relief available to him. He finished his soup and soaked up the remaining drops in the creases of the container with the bread of his mostly devoured sandwich. It was about time she nervously make her exit then back to the grindstone as they said.

But Mary didn't step nearer to the door. Instead, she moved in closer, stepping around his chair with her fingers trailing on the back. "And here everyone had convinced me you were the type who thinks the government is out to get us," she said, more humor than mockery in her tone.

John leaned back, smiling with forced pleasantries. "No, the government's already got me. I've got a spy network moved in across the street just to keep tabs on me. Didn't they tell you?"

"They did," she admitted, dragging her hand over his chair once more as she cleared the remnants of John's lunch from his desk and tidied them away in the bin by the door. "I'm much more interested in hearing about it from you, though." Mary smiled, blue eyes keen and lacking the usual derision most people viewed him with after a conversation.

"Why do you care?" he asked, unable to check his own misgivings about their short interlude. "Why does it matter about missing scientists, or about what I think?"

"Because I think you're interesting," she explained simply, then paused with her hand on the door. "Oh, by the way, if you're going to wear those trousers again, I think you may want to address the issue of excessive crotch creasing. Quick pass with an iron would do in a pinch. I don't think anyone else has noticed but if you like, I can come over tomorrow and give you a hand. I'm not busy."

John looked down at his lap, grimacing slightly as he saw what it was she had mentioned, the deep wrinkles at the junction of his trousers nearly pressed as firmly as their intentional creases from excessive days of being worn. Nothing to do about it now except most assuredly see about those khakis after work. "Right," he muttered, making a note to try and forget to be self-conscious for the rest of the day. Fat chance. He muttered, "Thanks."

Smile wide and blue eyes sparkling, Mary opened the door and walked back out towards reception. "I'll send Miss Jones right in. Flu symptoms," she announced, closing the door again behind her.

John furrowed his brow and returned to his previous patient notes, wondering in the corner of his harried mind if he had just accepted company for tomorrow evening and whether or not it mattered to be sure.


	18. Chapter 18

John flipped the on switch to his electric kettle before stomping off towards his room again to dress. His wardrobe was full of freshly laundered shirts and slacks while the drawers were heaped in paired socks and fresh pants. His floorboards were clear of anything other than empty shoes waiting to be worn, an empty hamper waiting in the corner to be stocked once again though hopefully in much shorter rotation. He'd worn black trousers and a beige cardigan the day before. He pulled out a different beige jumper and his most comfortable pair of green trousers from the wardrobe hangers stuffed inside. He'd already taken the time to shave and shower. A spot of cologne added a sweet musk to the scent of soap.

Two years, three months, and ten days. John readied and carried out his thermos, wearing his jacket, scarf, and gloves. He waved to the man in the window, made his way through the underground, got to work, listened to health complaints, and followed through with the monotony of another day's work. Another day like all the rest. Another day without Sherlock Holmes.

The only bit of interest came in yet another article shared by Mary Morstan. Attacks at Delphi were increasing, it read. Speculation that soon the Simulants would be attacking Earth were rampant. Fear mongering. Propaganda. John wondered what such headlines really meant when the truth was far more sinister than the perpetuation of a victim mentality that did not extend to the rights and expressions of the Simulants as well. Poor safe and secure Earth-bound humans and their protective blanket of militant action that killed without provocation so long as the majority felt safe. It was a manufactured fear put in place to combat a manufactured threat. Such articles made John feel sick with knowledge that went to waste inside his head. Humans had no reason to fear anything on Earth where regulations kept the real villains at bay. But the masses much preferred something that didn't look like them to fight. They'd rather a Boogeyman to someone charming in a suit and tie, something you needed a courtroom to battle instead of military might. Just as primitive as millennia before and as much a danger to themselves as to others. John hated the news only slightly less than the fact that he no longer lived an exciting enough life not to have the time to read it.

He must have lost himself in thought for some time as the knock on his door managed to properly startle him from his mental meanderings. Mary stood in the entryway, coat buttoned and scarf secure as she pulled on her gloves over long, dextrous fingers. "Ready?" she asked, brows piqued with curious amusement as she spied him sitting at his desk, no closer to leaving than had he just settled in.

John frowned at his computer screen, the article still there above the e-mail client window, the clock in the corner doing a fair job reprimanding him for his tardy desertion. How had the time gotten so away from him? John looked over at the nurse who stood with arms clasped in front, her knowing smile somewhat deriding as she watched him from her post. She didn't seem to really care what was keeping him this evening, though. She just stood there waiting, not encroaching on his space, watching him with round blue eyes as John slowly began closing down. 

"I was thinking Chinese," she said, her tone aggressive. "I know a good place. We can pick it up on the way but, since you've obviously taken the time to get yourself tidied, perhaps you'd rather join me at my flat instead where we can have it delivered."

John frowned slightly, memories from the day before coming back without as much confusion. He turned off his computer, giving her a sideways stare. "What makes you think I don't already have plans?" he asked.

"Well, for starters, you're still here. If you had plans you'd have been more anxious to go home. Any plans would have had to have been made yesterday since you didn't mention them when I offered to come over, and besides which we both know you spent yesterday doing laundry since the last time you wore those pants you got snot on them from Mikey Johnson." Her somewhat triumphant smile made her cheeks round and rosy. "So," she said, waiting patiently at the door. "Your place or mine?"

John hated that his immediate response was simply to stare. She reminded him of Sherlock when she spoke that way--with confidence that bordered on arrogance. Much as he tried to tell himself otherwise, he liked it. He respected it. It was comforting in his absence. John rubbed the back of his neck as he turned in his chair, standing to take his own coat from the hook and get himself dressed for the cold. "My place is a piece of shit," he said.

Mary's smile brightened her whole face. "I'll see about that Chinese then," she offered, and dug in her purse for her mobile phone while John finished tying on his winter scarf.

221 Baker Street was much nicer than John expected from a woman on a nurse's salary, the storefront and surrounding area bustling with life. He wasn't entirely sure what he expected or why the location seemed so strangely out-of-place but the feeling persisted long after they disembarked from the humble cab and entered the heavy, black door. The older woman who met them with the takeaway she'd accepted on their behalf was kind if not a bit nosy, eying John up and down as Mary grabbed up the takeaway bag and lead him up the stairs without much more than a hurried word of thanks. Flat B was on the first floor where the stairs dropped them off outside an open den with an odd interior window looking out towards the stairwell's continued climb. Mary dropped the food on the coffee table and proceeded to take off her winter things, hanging them from the hooks by the door as she gestured for John to come in.

"Make yourself at home," she said, fuzzy hat set to hang over the yoke of her scarf as she shrugged her way out of her long coat. She pointed with her chin towards the cluttered table set under an old cow skull where two chairs sat opposite a few piles of paper. "In fact, clear that off, will you? I'll get us drinks." She hung the last of her outer attire on the hooks then strode past and into her kitchen.

John had never felt more uncomfortable in his life. And to be honest, he kind of liked it. At least it wasn't predictable. That was more than could be said for a lot of things.

He hung his own winter items beside hers on the hooks and took to gathering up the papers like she'd told him to. Simulants, Delphi, the subject matter was hardly a surprise given the kinds of things she tended to talk to him about. The volume of information on the table was a little excessive for someone just casually observing the subject in the news, though. It was clear she was very interested in the topic indeed. John glanced over a few articles he'd never come across before as he pushed them into stacks and carried them over to the coffee table instead. 

"Fascinating, isn't it?" Mary asked, watching him as she carried two beers to the table. "Makes you wonder what they're hiding there, doesn't it?"

"Hiding where? In the news?"

Mary shook her head, unpacking the carton of rice and entrees and placing them at either ends of the short table. "No," she said, licking a bit of stray sauce from her thumb. "At Delphi."

John took a seat, breaking apart his wooden chopsticks as he smelled the spicy aroma of his meal and picked at a glossy piece of meat. "What makes you think something's hidden on Delphi?" he asked, teeth sinking in to tender cuts that were every bit as good as promised.

"The Simulants, of course. I mean, if they were trying to attack the military installation on Mars or, even more improbable, Earth, then why bother with Delphi when they could just as easily navigate the asteroid belt on a different route? They are specifically targeting the traffic at Delphi, though. So it makes one wonder what exactly it is about Delphi that's of interest to them, doesn't it?"

"I guess so," John said with a shrug and very little conviction.

Mary smiled slightly, chopsticks poised above her carton as she watched John. "You don't have to be careful around me. I wanted to see you outside of work because I wanted to talk with you in a place where you'd maybe open up a bit. I'm not trying to embarrass you, I'm trying to have a conversation with you."

John's frown deepened as he picked around at his meal. "Yeah, well... forgive me for being a little paranoid." It wasn't exactly an unfounded fear. People didn't want to hear about things contrary to popular opinion. Self-censorship was just part of coping with ridicule. 

"Tell me about yourself," Mary invited, her elbows up against the table. "Tell me how it is that you came to know so much and why you believe the government is watching you."

Now there was a trap if he ever heard one. It wasn't as though he had anything to lose, though. Even if she did laugh in his face, at least he'd gotten a free meal out of it. "You remember the Virgin Battle?" he asked, the story far too long to go into detail but the pertinent facts at least published and announced. "Well, I was there. A friend of mine--a hologram--he and I managed to save the crew of the Endeavor 1 and keep the ship from landing in enemy hands... Only they weren't enemies. They were Simulants. And... I don't think this is actually the best place to start from." John rubbed at the back of his neck with his free hand, his eyes averted out of habit as he racked his brain for the right place to begin. It was all so jumbled now. There was everything before Sherlock, everything with Sherlock, and then everything he'd discovered after that wove around and in between the other parts like a separate but related parenthetical discourse. He didn't know how to say it all without rambling or jumping in and out of asides. Maybe there wasn't a way to explain it all. But there might be an acceptable way to try.

John licked his lips and cleared his throat, sticky rice making his tongue feel thick. "Uh... well, Simulants aren't what we're told they are. They're not crazy, homicidal maniacs all banning together for the cause of anarchy and destruction. They're people. They're just human beings who have been made into the semi-mechanical people they now are, trying to stop further atrocities. And yeah, they're terrorists and they're killing people, but they don't have much of a choice when they're going up against not only the corporations that created them but a government that won't defend them. They're not going to attack Earth; they have absolutely nothing to gain by making us fear the inner solar system in the same way most people do the outer parts. Delphi's just a place to push back from. They don't want us expanding outwards until we can be trusted and frankly, with what I know, I don't blame them."

Mary leaned forward even more, her gaze intense and unwavering. "What do you know?"

"You ever heard of Commissioner Holmes?"

She shook her head. "Not really. Guessing he's part of the Proteus Parliament?" 

"More or less. I'd consider him sort of a secret keeper, really. He holds the truth, filters through it, and releases the story he wants to be heard. I used to think maybe everyone was in on it but Holmes isn't sloppy. He's an absolute genius. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that he's the puppet-master behind every single thing under the sun. And I have had the distinguished pleasure of punching him in the face." John smirked slightly as he hurried through another bite of juicy pork, still comforted in macabre ways that he'd gone through with that impulse at the time.

Mary hummed her amusement, shaking her head slightly before sipping from her beer. "How long were you in jail after that?" she asked.

"A week or so," John replied with a shrug. "Then they shipped me off here because they knew it was the only way to keep me alive."

"How's that?"

John swallowed his bite, taking the moment to try and organize an explanation. "This thing with the Simulants isn't just them against us. There's a third party involved that shares a common enemy with the Simulants and has sort of teamed up with them I guess. They--or rather _he_ \--wants to market eternal life and hold the human race by the balls. He can give Simulants their humanity back, he can fashion them into immortal soldiers, and he can pretty much put himself into a place of power that he can never be usurped from. Because he's a hologram. And he knows how to give holograms tangible bodies. And he has my friend. Or my friend is with him. It's semantics as far as the rest is concerned. Holmes can't get to the man behind the curtain so he wants to use me to draw my friend out and then use him to find his prey."

"So you're under surveillance until they find him," Mary surmised, her attention unwavering even as John felt he'd already spoken long enough to make anyone's ears numb. She was absolutely enthralled, though; hanging on his every word. It was... nice. For a change. Definitely something he could get use to again.

"Till they find him or until he shows up and rescues me," John explained. "Originally they were going to just lock me up on the moon and wait for me to be targeted for a break out like those scientists. I told Holmes I'd rather be dead than help him and.... well, I overreacted a bit. Maybe. In the end they agreed that I wasn't going to be of any use to anyone without some manner of incentive. So we compromised on Earth. Much greater odds in my favor of Sherlock coming in and getting me out; still fairly good odds for Holmes to catch my friend considering the surveillance details and other restrictions. It's a bet of sorts."

"Did you say Sherlock Holmes?" Mary asked, her face pinching on an expression of disbelief.

John tried to remember his exact words but knew he'd at least mentioned the two names separately. "I might have," he said, his brow scrunching with wary concern. "Why?"

"What a small world," she muttered as she stood, walking across to the bookshelves by the fireplace and to a box sitting there among the picture frames. She walked back with it, shaking her head with a smile. "I found this lot when I moved in. The landlady said it was left over from her previous tenant. Chap by the name of Sherlock Holmes. Funny name. Can't be that many of them around."

John felt his pulse skip then hammer double. "I'm sorry, _what_?"

"Have a look. Actually, it was his stuff that got me interested in the missing scientists in the first place. He kept quite a log on all sorts of odd things going on."

John barely heard her as he stood from his seat to better peer into the box, notepads and digital cards all nicely tucked in rows against the walls with newspaper clippings and odds and ends filling in the center. It could have been someone else's things, there could have been someone else--however unlikely--with the name of Sherlock Holmes. But among the scraps of paper was a crinkled and ill-kept photograph, the display covered in stuck pixels and lines of broken light. The plastic sheet showed a brightly lit tree in the background with green garland and stockings hanging from a fireplace mantel in festive loops. And front and center, flanked by his parents and opposite the familiar, eagle like visage of a youthful commissioner, was the skinny and unmistakable figure of his curly topped Sherlock Holmes.


	19. Chapter 19

John took the box home with him with the greatest of care, hands soft and grip tense as though holding on to a precious relic. In many ways, that was exactly what it was. He took a cab rather than the underground least he run into one of the commissioner's many spies lingering there, waiting to see what had made him deviate from the norm and report back with the curious case of a box they could see and stare at the entire distance from one station to another. The might see a name somewhere, recognize handwriting or some other personal tell. They might be able to inform Holmes as to exactly what he'd collected in that case. John didn't want to give the man even that. The box was far too large to hide, though, and discretion often brought on more attention than to be flaunted. So John made every effort to be obvious about his precious cargo as he alighted on the curb outside his own flat from the black cab on the street. The woman in the window of the flat opposite could most assuredly see him plainly as he carried the open-topped package towards the front door of his complex but doubtful was her ability to see the details of what it contained. He'd been meeting with a friend, a work colleague, so nondescript notes and stacks of paper could so easily be related to the surgery. He hoped. But then again, what reason did the spies have for believing he was up to anything? He wasn't. He was just taking something home to read, wasn't he? It wasn't related to them in any way. Just notes and papers and a hidden photograph tucked deep between notebook pages.

He managed the doors one-handed as he took the stairs up to his home, slapping his wallet against the access panel with the expectation it would read the card inside. He was never really very handy with little life expedients like access panels or voice-activation features. In space, they were built into everything and worked just the way they were intended. In London, they were additions made to the existing infrastructure. John had more trouble getting into his own flat than he ever did managing an Expedition class personal scouter. The Black Manta had been a dream compared to John's temporarily permanent home, updated long ago with only the best in annoyances from lights he still hadn't figured out how to manage to his ill-tempered and argumentative toaster. The door today seemed to understand he was trying to carry something bulky and only resisted for a minute or so before relinquishing its locks and sliding aside to allow John entrance into his darkened flat.

He put the box on the kitchen table and grabbed the kettle from the counter, expecting a long night ahead and wanting something warm to fuel him. He didn't bother with his winter accouterments until the kettle was flipped on and the water set to boil, his coat set to hang off the back of his chair while scarf and gloves occupied a corner by themselves in a neat little pile. He dug into the box immediately after, searching out the only item he'd bothered to hide in the time before: the photograph. Somehow it hadn't occurred to him, until the moment he'd held it in his hand, that in all the time he'd been missing his friend he hadn't a single item left with him to remember him by. Despite the lines and pixels of damage, it was still a very clear capture of the youngest Holmes's visage. It was still one hundred percent Sherlock in all his peculiarities. 

He'd been rather plain faced and awkward looking in his youth, John noticed. Sherlock's notable black curls were much more tightly kept atop his head, the sides trimmed back to leave his chiseled cheeks unmasked. His nose looked enormously long with blue eyes very obviously wide set. He wasn't entirely unattractive but certainly exotic looking. It was a face one couldn't very easily get bored looking at. It garnered attention and, after a while, appreciation. By the time the kettle whistled John had decided Sherlock had been sort of cute in his adolescence. Not anything near as handsome as he'd grown up to be but most certainly cute. The family resemblance was unmistakable in the two adults standing proudly in the background. The mother's eyes seemed caught transitioning between clear blue and piercing grey while the father's bone-structure was a mirror of Sherlock's own with a few decades of growth to credit. Even the commissioner with his floppy bangs trying to disguise an already receding hairline seemed right at home with the statuesque group celebrating by the fireplace in a cozy looking foyer. No one looked happy, per se, but they looked peaceful even with both boys' expressions akin to pouted scowls. Just a normal, average, everyday family taking a picture by the fire on a cold Christmas day.

It was the first picture John had ever seen of a living Sherlock Holmes. He'd seen photographs of his murdered corpse and a hologram was an interactive photograph in many ways as well. The young man in the picture was going to grow older, though. Going to mature and exist in a world where his mother nagged on about jumpers in winter and skinned knees at summer time. It was precious beyond measure for that simple fact alone. He didn't have a frame to keep it safe in and a drawer seemed far too much like a tomb. Despite his wish not to further harm it, John fetched his wallet and folded it to fit, making sure none of the creases formed over Sherlock's face as he placed it where it would always be near. It was his now. If nothing else, the box had at least already given him something worth his time. He placed his wallet on the table to be picked up in the morning, feeling strangely comforted by the knowledge of the pictures presence inside.

John poured himself a hot mug of tea before sitting down to filter through the rest. There was a strange black cube he couldn't open and a digital memory device he didn't dare plug in. He was hardly without suspicion when it came to his electronics being bugged. Or his phone. Or his flat in general. He put the memory card in his jacket pocket, though, with some consideration given to the possibility of looking at it from one of the surgery computers. He liked to think that Holmes couldn't possibly have him tapped and followed everywhere. He liked to think that, but doubt always nagged at such optimism. It was still a better option than home which always felt strangely rummaged through even when no evidence remained.

Sipping gently of his tea, John took out one of the many notebooks all scribbled over in slanted text, turning over the pages to peruse the contents therein. Chemistry notations, a decent doodle of the heart's anatomy, far too many notes to ever be required on different types of tobacco ash. Nerdy, really. Somehow he'd forgotten how bookish he could be. John's memories always seemed to center in on the bits where they were left breathless though Sherlock's brilliant skills in reasoning often qualified. But there were dates for Latin exams in the margins of pages dedicated to flowcharts on cause and effect. It was all very average, really, if not a little obsessive and macabre. The sort of things you'd expect from any university student. But nowhere did he mention missing scientists. John put that book down and reached for another. It was going to be a long night indeed.

Flipping through the paper pages, he could remember vaguely teasing his sister Harry on her love of books and other sorts of paper items. So outdated; so pointless, so inferior to the tablets he used in school, to read and write on, to play his games. Then in grade school there had been a power outage which saw them all locked in darkness with only a few torches to keep things bright. The tablets only lasted as long as the battery life allowed whereas Harry was limited only by the availability of sight. In the end, they had played tick-tack-toe and hangman on the blank pages of her notebook, scribbling out in ink pens on hemp pages that were more permanent in many ways that all the data ever stored. Even now, he could trace the impression made on the pages by Sherlock's own pen, feel as well as read the words he'd scrolled there in messy script, pass his fingers over places only Sherlock's hands had been before. That was the beauty of the physical and tactile. Some things remained because they were simply irreplaceable. On earth anyway. It was still quite off-putting to be on Earth in some ways; to see and touch paper and not think anything of it. He missed the straightforward nature of space but rather enjoyed the eccentricities of a world still settled in between the past and the present with bits and pieces of both everywhere and a part of every day.

It was nearly two in the morning when John forced himself to give up for the night. Whatever Mary had seen that had piqued her interest in the missing scientists wasn't included in the box. Not in a physical sense, anyway. John still had the memory stick but looking into its contents would have to wait. He couldn't risk tipping off the commissioner in any way--not so soon after visiting Sherlock's old home. Not when his eyes might once again be focusing in on John due to a change in habits and locale. Nothing in the box could offer John a way off the planet but he feared for the knowledge a younger version of his genius friend might have collected and how it might aid his somewhat tyrannical brother in ways currently unseen. 

John didn't bother repacking the box as he stood, leaving the notebooks and loose pages scattered in vaguely organized piles separating school work from detective type things though the overlap was often great. He turned the lights off and slumped off to bed, dragging his feet and rubbing his eyes as he did his best not to count out the number of hours left available to sleep. Four. If he was lucky. Really, he'd been better off not counting, especially considering how little faith he had in an instant fall into comfortable abandon. His mind was still wide awake even as his body was winding down.

But in some small way, he'd seen Sherlock Holmes today. Good dreams, however short, were sure to come.


	20. Chapter 20

Despite keeping an eye out for her from morning until close, John did not see nurse Morstan at all the next day. The others on staff grumbled about her when asked about her absence, no small amount of bad blood present though it was news to John all the same. He never could be bothered to keep up with office politics. It had taken him the better part of a week to even figure out Mary wasn't the same person that used to send his clients in back when she'd first come aboard. But the nurses' looks of disdain were hard to ignore as questions about Mary set them off on minor tirades. She was lazy, bossy, opinionated, and worse still was her crime of not having the decency to even call in if she was going to be poorly. John did his best to back his way out of the conversation he'd never intended to get in the middle of in the first place. They might ask for his opinion if not. He wasn't dumb enough to fall for that trap. 

It still left John with questions, though, and one less possibility through which to have them answered. It occurred to him that he didn't even have Mary's phone number nor any e-mail address other than that for work. He could probably find something in the HR files but he was no hacker and certainly not savvy enough to make much of a show of an attempt. He knew where she lived and that was about it; information that was not promising to be of much help in the interim. It could help later, though, when he was done with his final investigation of the box's contents. For now, he had nothing to do but wait for the rest of the staff to clear out and leave him to his long-awaited task.

The memory stick had sat heavy in his trouser pocket all day, his hands delving in to make sure it was still there several times throughout. His confidence was far too low in regards to the privacy of his own computer to try despite the thin wear of his patience but optimism saw hope in the abandoned screens of the nurses' station. He waited ten minutes after the last of them shouted back their goodbye--long enough for someone to have turned back to get something left behind if temporarily forgotten--then took his seat among the cluttered desk of photographs and calendars, brushing his hands against the input panels for a slot into which to fix his new card. He guided it in, wiggling it to make sure it was in the proper hole and not somehow upside-down or put into the fat end of a networking port--he'd managed both on different occasions. Everything seemed right, everything seemed to be working. A task manager on the desktop let him know a peripheral had been plugged in and asked what he wanted to do with it. John clicked to open and waited as the folder obeyed, the sea of data he'd hoped to uncover revealing itself to be a single file: solution.agra

John stared at it, not sure what to think of it, and equally irate to discover the computer felt the same way. _Application Not Found_ ; _File Type Not Supported_. John smashed his hands against the desk as everything he tried came up with a similar warning, refusing to show him the contents therein which promised him much in their naming. He didn't even know what the question was but he had the solution somehow, if only he had the means to view it. Like Mary had. 

John ejected the memory stick and pocketed it again, grabbing his coat and scarf in a hurry as he quickly packed up and closed down. Whatever information was available in the box, John had missed it but _Mary_ had not. Or perhaps she' never returned the best piece of evidence to the parcel containing Sherlock's old things. Either way, he needed Mary if he was going to discover whatever it was that she had from Sherlock's many notes. He hailed a cab and set off at once, feeling already too much like he'd wasted the day.

He didn't quite remember the address but he recalled the name of the eatery out front and the street name nearly by association--Baker. It didn't take long at all to find himself standing on the stoop with the brass knocker in the curl of his fingers, the steady _rap-tap-tap_ requesting an audience within. He had no doubt he'd recalled it correctly when the older woman from the night before peaked around the black door, smiling at him questioningly as she pulled it open still.

"Can I help you?" she asked, her aged face pulling into a gentle smile, wrinkles moving like lines on a pulley to raise her rosy cheeks and arch her drawn on brows.

John smiled back at her, hands flexing at his sides with nerves. "Is Mary in?" he asked, almost immediately feeling stupid for doing so. Of course she was; she'd been feeling ill--or so the nurses at the reception desk supposed.

However, the older woman shook her head, short auburn hair swishing across her face. "Sorry, Love, haven't seen her all day."

John felt his jaw tighten and hands turn to fists as dread seeped in through his bones with stray thoughts turning concern into the beginning threads of panic. Had he been an idiot all day long? Even though they didn't like her, the nurses had seemed surprised Mary hadn't called in to say she wouldn't be coming. Had instead she gone missing on her way to work? He didn't care to be an extremist but his mind could connect the dots without much prompting from his paranoia. They could have taken her--Holmes and his network. He might have gotten to her before John had, realized before he had that the box wasn't nearly as useful as the person who had understood and compiled its contents. She'd fallen right into John's hands and then slipped through his fingers.

Or she'd been asleep all day and happened to pop out to the chemist while the older woman wasn't looking, expecting her tenant to be at work anyway. Much less dire. Much more _normal_. Much more the state of his life in the two years he'd been stuck on planet Earth.

He took a deep breath, trying to reclaim his previous episode of sanity where adrenalin had pushed it aside in favor of more exciting ideas. "Right," he said, stuffing his hand in his pocket to pull out a strip of paper with his mobile number scrawled on it. "Well, when you do, can you give her this? We work together and I just wanted to make sure she was alright."

The older woman's smile grew warmer as she accepted the paper, her coy expression leaving little to be disguised as to what she thought about a couple of work colleagues who'd shared dinner the night before. "I'll make sure she gets it," she promised, the little wink only validating every hint the rest of her portrayed.

John nodded, feeling awkward just standing on the stoop, but drawn still to linger even with his task complete. "Have you lived here long?" he found himself asking, gesturing to the building least she mistake his question to be about London, England, or Earth itself.

She nodded, patting the door-frame fondly. "I bought the property back in the 70's."

"So you were here when Sherlock lived here then."

"Sherlock?" she asked, round eyes made small with the furrow of her brow.

That wasn't at all what John had expected. People didn't simply forget Sherlock Holmes. From everything he knew about him, the man had seemed dead set on living his life in such a way as to ensure everyone remembered him--even if rarely was it done fondly. "Yeah... Sherlock Holmes? Uh.. tall chap, curly hair, sort of a pompous git."

Shrugging, the landlady shook her head once more. "Sorry, can't say I remember anyone like that. My last tenants were a married couple. They'd been on for... oh... ten or fifteen years I suppose. Retired to the countryside. Nice couple. Proper gentlemen."

"You... you've never heard the name Sherlock Holmes before?" John inquired, paranoia once again weaving trails through his thoughts.

"Sorry, dear. Should I have?"

John shook his head, licking his lips as he stepped back from the steps and onto the pavement. "Please make sure Mary gets that," he repeated, gesturing one last time to the paper she now held. "I need to speak to her. Urgently."

"Of course. Is something the matter?" she asked, looking worried and rather perplexed.

"Maybe," John told her as he turned his collar up and hurried to the curb, hailing a cab to hasten him home.

The game, so it seemed, was on.


	21. Chapter 21

The way John saw it, there was one of two likely scenarios playing out around him. Scenario one saw Mary Morstan innocently happening across a box of Sherlock's things and assuming on her own that they must have belonged to the prior tenant. How they came to be there was a mystery but not an impossibility. Most of the contents were scholarly and could have easily been something left behind and collected by a retiring professor with the intention to return it once the student was found. It was very easy to imagine how happenstance might bring the innocuous box to London and how assumptions might be made that would pave the way for curious coincidences and fateful rendezvous. Scenario two was of a far more sinister vein, however. Mary was rather new to London after all. 

Scenario two said the woman was a plant and had been given the box as means to ensnare John and perhaps even earn his trust. Maybe after two years, Holmes was as tired of waiting as John was. Maybe the commissioner had decided to set things in motion, get John on the trail once more, gaining his cooperation through further deception and lies. It all came down to what John felt he knew about Mary--could she be just another spy sent to spurn on a change from inaction? Possibly. He honestly didn't know her. But considering the fact that all their talk had been about things related to either Sherlock or Moriarty, John felt just fine entertaining the notion she might be just another cruel attempt to bully him into submission.

He flipped off the man in the window of the flat opposite, not caring to play nicely with his usual observers when their presence seemed to be pointless outside the precedent set before. Holmes had been respectful enough of his right to live a life within the limitations set but this... this was crossing a line he hadn't considered needed to be drawn. And it was so _him_ , so utterly despicable and low, that the previous concerns for the woman's welfare fell aside to little more than contempt. Wherever Mary was, good riddance. He wasn't going to play into Holmes' hand by looking for her. She had his number now and she'd call it eventually. And if she didn't? Well, the landlady would eventually call the police if she failed to return home after a time. It wasn't his responsibility and it wasn't his concern. He'd put the box in a closet and forget the whole thing. He was not going to play into anyone's games.

John smeared his wallet against the entry panel, the darkened interior opening before him as the door moved aside. The usual feeling of someone having been there felt even more oppressing than normal as he stormed towards the kitchen to make another pot of tea. All of Sherlock's things were still on the table, stacked neatly in columns near the corners. One of the books was left open to an equation in chemistry in front of a chair that had been neatly pushed in. John was rather sure he'd been looking at notes on soil displacement before heading off to bed the night before. He was nearly certain the chair had been left to block the walkway. There wasn't time to probe memory, though; to make sure he hadn't just been so tired that he didn't properly remember the way things had been left. As John stared at the table and its almost-but-not-quite display of sedentary things, footsteps clicked against the floor in the hallway to his bedroom. He wasn't alone--not even close. And the concerns for his things being moved were secondary to the presence of another.

"Hello, John," Mary's voice called out from the darkness, her tone almost conversation despite the unwelcomed nature of her presence. She remained mostly in the shadows as the kitchen light highlighted her petite silhouette in the hall. Both hands were visible, neither held a gun. That hardly made her non-threatening given the circumstances, though. 

John stared at her for a moment, proud to note that he hadn't been so desperate for a change of pace as to have constructed drama from circumstance. He wasn't sure how she'd gotten in but the fact that it hadn't alerted any of Holmes's men only gave further credence to his thoughts from before. If they thought they'd caught him by surprise, they were wrong and he made every possible effort to ensure his lack of perplexity registered loud and clear. 

Pulling the stacked columns of notebooks towards him, John slowly made a show of packing away Sherlock's old things. "I was wondering when you'd show yourself," he lied, his jaw flexing with barely restrained tension. If she weren't a woman, he'd have much rather have punched her in the face than given her the chance to speak. As it was, gender wasn't going to remain all that much of a deterrent if she thought she could lead him along with more lies and attempts at manipulation. "So who are you? Who do you work for?" he asked, wanting it all in the open for once so as to more quickly get her out.

He could hear Mary smile even without looking at her face, the heels of her shoes clicking against the floor as she slowly joined him in the kitchen. "I'm an independent. Like you," she said.

John could not withhold a contemptuous smile. "Like me? Yeah, I can see that. What with the whole sneaking into people's homes and constructing elaborate lies." He gave himself permission to look up, daring his eyes to meet hers as she watched him with evident pleasure. She was enjoying this--whatever this was. John's scowl deepened into his frown lines. "I've been down on this planet for two years while everyone else plays hide-and-seek. I'm not involved--I'm not even a _spectator_. So whatever you want, you can forget it."

"What if I said I could get you off world?"

"I'd tell you to go back to Holmes and tell him where he can stick it." John finished piling the pages into the box, feeling his fingers threaten to tear the easily destroyed memories to pieces in anger and frustration. With nothing left to occupy his body, there was only Mary there to focus on and neither of them were going to appreciate that much. He kept the table between them for her good as much as for his sanity. As interesting as developments were, this wasn't what he wanted it to be. He'd enjoyed, even if for only a day, having something akin to a friend again. Mary's smile was hardly a friendly sight now as she watched him with an interest that lacked any sympathy. Just another puppet. He almost wished he didn't know her name. She would have made a charming Famine. "I'm not stupid enough to fall for something that obvious," he told her, fingers clenching around the back of a chair. "I won't side with him and this is by far the most desperate trap he's ever set if he thinks he can lure me into his service with pretty promises from a mysterious third party."

Mary shook her head. "I told you, I'm an independent. I don't work for Holmes or Moriarty."

"Well, you're certainly involved if you know that name. Which is honestly all the more reason for me to tell you to get the hell out of my flat."

If she was listening, she didn't show it. She neither batted a lash nor moved aside as she continued to stand opposite John in his kitchen, speaking with the same arrogance everyone else seemed to employ when telling John what to do. "I have a ship waiting to take you. You don't belong here, John. Regardless of your misgivings, isn't it worth it to get out of here?"

John chuckled with derision. "I can't even get _near_ a space dock let alone a space-worthy vessel. Like hell I'm going anywhere with you. But I'm curious as to how exactly you planned on getting me off Earth with a network of spies keeping tabs on me at all hours."

"How isn't important if you trust me," she insisted.

"And I believe we've already established that I don't."

Mary shrugged, as though the detail was moot and yet to be proven, and gestured instead to the box of Sherlock's things. "You found the memory stick," she surmised, not waiting for acknowledgement. "Do you have it on you?"

John nodded, remembering the small lump in his trouser pocket where the thin card currently was held. "I tried to look at it at work. Couldn't read the file."

"Hold on to it, John. You'll be somewhere that can very soon," she assured him.

"I'm not going anywhere with you!" John slammed the chair against the table, the hollow sound of wood smashing into wood reverberating through the echoing room. "What part of ' _no_ ' are you having a hard time with?" he asked, practically shouting but finding the heavy breaths of irritation quieting his yell.

Mary frowned, perhaps for the first time understanding that John was not in the least bit pleased to have her there. She stepped back from the table, hands at her hips as she looked him over with curious contemplation. "Were you really always this bull-headed? I remember you being much more amenable. Perhaps the old adage was correct."

"What are you--"

"Are you ready, John?" she asked, eyes intense. "Because it all starts now."

There was something in that stare that made John feel more than rage for a moment; something that made his pulse skip and all moisture leave his mouth. "What the fuck are you going on about?" he asked, staring without blinking as the blues of her eyes swirled with familiar hues of green and grey.

It wasn't a smooth transition. The petite form of Mary Morstan did not slowly grow taller, bulking out from a feminine frame to a thin but masculine one. Her sweet attire of polyester blouses and cotton cardigans did not distort into a sleek, black, tailored suit. Her round face and features did not stretch and rearrange from impish to charmingly equine. She was there and then she wasn't. He wasn't there and then he was. In the time it took to switch on a light, Sherlock Holmes was standing in his kitchen, watching John with a slightly smug grin as he waited for John's impression.

And if not for the table, John Watson would have leaned across and punched him in the face.


	22. Chapter 22

Almost more than anything, John wanted to be happy. He wanted to look across his kitchen at the unchanging face of his friend and feel relief, joy, and satisfaction at being reunited again. He wanted to cheer him on for getting in under his brother's radar, congratulate him on living up to his expectations of excellence, and embrace him as a long lost friend he'd missed more profoundly than most realized. He wanted to be pleased to see him. He wasn't. If anything, it made him furious.

John held his ground at the table's end all the same, fingers flexing on the back of a chair as he stood licking his lips, his face caught between expressions of rage and hurt. "Oh, yeah, I _really_ trust you now!" he shouted, his breath hot in the back of his throat. "Just how stupid do you think I am?"

The Sherlock frowned thoughtfully, finally dropping whatever pretentious act he'd been putting on in favor of a far more subdued version of the detective, his eyes wide and bottom lip slightly protruding on a mixed expression of humility. "John," he began, his mouth open to say more.

John did not care to hear it. "No. Get out," he ordered, a small tremor running through his right hand. "There is nothing you can say that will assure me you're him. Not one goddamn thing. Hell, it's been two years; I don't even know that Holmes hasn't built his own hard-light holograms just to bait me with. You could be anyone. Or maybe just the wrong version of him. So just get the hell out of my sight."

"I can prove it," the hologram said, unmoving in both his position in the room and in the expression on his face. He held fast to an odd form of longing sadness that made John's chest ache in recognition. He looked at John in the same way John's heart looked at him, putting a face to a feeling that was hard to describe without evoking language like hopeful and tragic. 

John shook his head, holding tightly to anger to keep his head above his heart. "No. You can't," he promised, turning away.

"Three words."

That was a laugh. "Three words?" John repeated, shaking his head as a spiteful smile cracked his cold exterior. "You think you can convince me in just three words that you're the real Sherlock Holmes? You honestly think I am so gullible you can earn my trust with just _three words_?!"

The hologram nodded and John let out a laugh. Three words? After a two year absence, after their rushed goodbye, after everything he and the real Sherlock Holmes had gone through? Three words? If the next thing this areshole said was ' _I love you_ ', John was going to punch him in the face--regardless if it hurt the hologram or not. He was not some lovesick moron to be swayed by a confession, wanting it to be true and thereby believing in it wholeheartedly, without question, without further concern or care for consequence. Moriarty had been there; Moriarty had seen them kiss and knew perhaps better than anyone else what ties the two of them had. Three words were not enough--could never be enough. The number of pages it would take to earn John's trust was innumerable by John's own measure. There was simply no way. And it was insulting that the masquerading man in front of him thought three woulds would be enough.

"I'm sorry, John."

... _Fucking hell_. "Sherlock, you're a real piece of work," John shouted, his whole body tingling as pinpricks ran across him in a shiver. "You absolute git, you had better mean that!" He hurried around the kitchen table, pulling Sherlock against him, one hand cupping the back of his neck to pull him down while the other pressed him to his chest tightly. The hologram melted there, curling his own arms to cradle John's shoulders. His smile was alive in his words.

"I knew you'd remember. There wasn't time to establish a proper passcode but I was confident you'd remember our last words."

He did. Of course he did. John had thought of them often, about their literal meaning in terms of a hologram's natural expiration. Holograms weren't supposed to stay active for more than a year and if Sherlock managed it for longer, it would certainly be because of Moriarty's technology. He'd thought _that_ was the message he'd left him with; a vague admission of weakness with surrender as the best possible solution. And maybe, at the time, it was that too. But where an imposter might try to sway John with the pages of examples he'd thought he'd need, imploring him to believe and trust with hours of exposition, the real Sherlock Holmes only needed three little words. How had he ever doubted this man?

And lord but he was taller than he remembered. Thinner. Somehow more handsome. John knew intrinsically that the man could not possibly have changed but it felt as though he had, as though the years had passed for him as well. They had for the young man in the photograph he'd found in the student's box. It was a comforting illusion to delight in.

John kissed his hair, missing his cheek or temple by a mile of wild, dark brown curls. Sherlock smelled of Mary's perfume and felt warm against his chest. It had been over too quickly the last time they'd stood together in a world where this was possible. John hadn't given any thought to aspects of an optimized hologram outside the ability to touch and feel. It was like holding a real body, like feeling the real tickle of hair, like pressing his own slightly stubbled cheek against another's smooth and pliant flesh. It was like a dream come true. "Oh my god," he groaned, tightening his hold against his friend. "It's really you."

Sherlock nodded, pulling away slowly, his fingers trailing down John's back and shoulders in a withering embrace that lingered with regret. "Yes. But now we must hurry. My brother will already be mobilizing."

"How did you even get in here?"

"I put a spare transceiver in the box," Sherlock explained, picking up the innocuous black cube John had unpacked the night before from the parcel on the table. It was open now, and hollow inside, its contents freed and implied to now be behind the mask of Sherlock's facade. He put the cube back down and offered a small, congenial smile before his expression turned to the serious. "Best part of being a hologram is that so long as my signal can get through, I can hop between multiple transceivers with no damage to my core program. Mycroft will have your apartment tapped, though, and my use of dampeners will have only alerted him to my presence even more. We need to get to Tower Bridge."

John frowned, following his friend's words at his normal, slower pace. "What's at Tower Bridge?" he asked.

"I told you," Sherlock explained. "I have a ship waiting for you."

John nodded, rubbing at the back of his neck. "And then what?"

"Then it's up to you to end this, John. And the contents of that memory stick will help you do it."

John nodded again, anxious energy pumping through his veins as he mentally prepared for whatever lay ahead. He wasn't prepared for the explosion, though. He supposed, as far as explosions go, that was rather par for the course. It rattled the windows and flung aside the glass in shattering waves of wreckage. Metal splinters sang through the air like whistling missiles with dust and other debris creating clouds of frantic destruction. John hardly registered the attack before he felt Sherlock's weight on top of him, the strength of the hologram throwing him back and to the floor while above the twinkle of chaos danced with sparks and firelight. He couldn't hear a thing about the high-pitched whine in his ears. It had him dizzy and disoriented but it wasn't enough to take him out of the moment. As soon as they hit the ground, John was turning to get to his knees to crawl, scrambling for the sofa in the living room to use as cover for further assault. He sat with his back against the flat paneling of striped upholstery, coughing into the crook of his elbow with eyes squinting against the clouds of gypsum and smoke. 

Sherlock followed him quickly, the familiar face changing in an instant as it had when Mary had become Sherlock. This time the detective's appearance gave way to a duplicate of John's own as they both squatted down behind cover, Sherlock muscling in to further shield John. The ringing in John's ears made it difficult to hear much of anything but he trusted Sherlock, as a hologram, did not have the same handicap. His posture and presence said John's instincts were right and in the distorted reflection in the lamp on the side table, John could make out two men entering through a hole that had been his front door. They were armed and wearing breathing masks. They wore no insignia John could recognize but instead stood in full black attire as they scanned the open foyer.

Sherlock pressed his hand to John's mouth and motioned for him to stay down, not moving an inch until John had nodded he'd understood. The hand then quickly left as the hologram instead began to mime a cough, standing up from his crouch behind the sofa as he squinted across the room at the intruders.

"Who--"

Sherlock did not get more than a syllable out in John's borrowed voice as laser sights found his chest and shots followed forth into the hollow cavity. John watched the image of himself shutter at their contact and fall backwards, blue eyes wide in shock as he fell in a heap, the motion bone jarring and unnatural--a motion only gravity controlled and not the constraints of comfort in the body of a man. It was very strange to spectate his own death and know that it wasn't real. It was odd to watch a man die and know, for all intents and purposes, he was already dead. Just another act, another great performance by the consummate actor. But he didn't like it. It felt wrong. And it felt worse every second that went by and Sherlock continued to lay there as a shell of John with his eyes wide open and unblinking.

The men's voices were just distant, staccato hums above the static tone in his ears. He didn't need words, though. He could feel in the floor their footsteps growing closer and see in the lamp their shapes drawing near. They meant to kill him, that much was obvious. Agents of Holmes or Moriarty, they did not care to preserve his life. John crept nearer the side of the sofa closest to their approach, praying he made as little sound as possible without his own ears to trust in this fight. As soon as the first black leg was in sight, John was in motion, striking out against the taught tendons above the calf to collapse his posture and throw him off balance. The armed man stumbled forward while the man behind him rushed to aid but the fight was already over the moment John made his move. As one man fell, Sherlock rose, chopping him in the throat with his hand to stun him with little time spared to grab for his gun. The pursuing attacker was faced with John and him both. Mistaking an armed hologram as the real threat, John had the man on his back and unconscious with a swing kick and a punch to the nose. John wasted little time in helping himself to the spare sidearm holstered at the attacker's belt, checking the charge settings and hopping to his feet in a sprint as he hurried to the door to check for more.

Sherlock was speaking but the words still weren't there. As before, it was more a matter of lip reading than sound that made the detective make any bit of sense. "We have to hurry to the bridge," he seemed to say, context aiding where questions arose.

John nodded, finding everything clear outside the still settling clouds of dusty powder. He gestured for the hologram to follow, keeping his back to the wall as they hurried through the corridor towards the fire escape in the back. Sherlock retained John's appearance as they went, any questions as to why fading into obscurity as the deadly nature of their pursuant had proven the disguise an appropriate farce. It wasn't about pretending Sherlock wasn't there, it was about not giving anyone a clear idea as to whom among them was susceptible to laser charges and death. This wasn't just about getting John off the planet anymore, it was a matter of life and death. And with a gun in his hand and Sherlock at his side, John couldn't have wished for anything more.


	23. Chapter 23

John knew the streets of London well but Sherlock knew them better. There was no cab to carry them onwards they could trust, no escapable trip on the underground they could risk. They took the streets on foot, skipping down alleys and climbing over gated walkways as they ran. Back in the fray. It was like reliving those moments on Ganymede and Titan with security officers on their tail, running down the service walkways and dodging blaster fire. It was everything life had been and more with the threat level elevated far above the norm. This wasn't them against corporate interests or even them against a unified threat. This was Sherlock and John against the entire galaxy and two thirds of that force against them. It was nice, at least, not have to worry about Simulants on Earth. For now Mycroft and Moriarty were enough to deal with. For now it didn't matter which one pursued.

John climbed up another skip to get his hands on the fire escape landing, heaving his body upwards on muscles that had grown tired from a life in stagnation. They obeyed on adrenalin and memory where fatigued had worn them down. Sirens said it wasn't over and only darkness kept them out of sight from the hovering vehicles that policed from the sky. He helped Sherlock up and the two started their climb. Roof tops and alley ways, leaving no lateral path to follow. If they couldn't keep off their enemy's radar with tactics like these, they were never destined to make it out at all. 

He still couldn't quite hear. It felt like a rough take off, the pressure inside his head still not matching that outside. The ringing at least had subsided somewhere between Clark and Jubilee but John still heard things at a muffle at a distance around him and felt it rumble in his head. As with many of the times before, there wasn't really a need for conversation. Talking would slow him down, keep him from spending those breaths on breathing, give further evidence to those who would stop them as they tried to hasten past.

They avoided the larger roads in favor of Burslem Street and Hooper. They cut across only where crowds might pass and stayed to the shadows of the train tracks near Chamber Street when able. Sherlock avoided St. Kathrine's Docks as much as possible and took them past and around in seemingly unnecessary ways to approach from the other side. It took nearly an hour of haphazard routes and uncertain meanderings but the two tall forms that stood as the iconic Tower Bridge were well within their sights, fellow pedestrians making for a sparse but still lightly populated trail onwards across the river. John wondered about the ship Sherlock had waiting. A family yacht, an old friend's borrowed pleasure cruiser, a leaky rowboat hardly fitting to call a ship at all. Once they were out into the sea, out in international waters, there was no telling what further aid Sherlock had managed to get on his side. But they had to get that far. They had to board the ship first and get away before shots were fired and more damage was made.

Sherlock pulled him to pause near a public garden, using the overhang of the trees to shroud them in the night outside the halo of the street lamps. John stayed close, catching his breath, eyes tracing their surroundings for enemy sights while sound still registered thick and fuzzy. There were blue lights bouncing off nearly every glass surface, it seemed, with yellow and blue checkered patterns coming into view around buildings, people, and cars. It wasn't the most inspiring of sights, especially not as so many of the police vehicles seemed to be heading for the docks as well. John frowned, one hand resting on Sherlock's back as he leaned close to speak. "How do we get around them?" he asked, still looking up at the tall glass building across the street that let them glance through towards the awaiting shipyard.

Sherlock followed his glance but quickly dismissed it, looking instead straight ahead at the bridge. "We don't need to. Your ride is waiting in the Thames. Walk out into the middle of the bridge, jump off, and they'll take care of your retrieval."

That wasn't even close to the stupidest thing Sherlock had ever told him to do but it still warranted a second pass. "What?"

"It's the only way. If I thought anyone else could do this, I wouldn't involve you at all until I took out Moriarty and corralled Mycroft myself. As it happens, it's easier to abduct you from Earth right under their noses than it is to gain control over either."

"Which involves me jumping off a bridge," John repeated, still not having completely gotten past that particular part in the plan.

Sherlock smiled, the usually mocking expression downright cruel when expressed through John's borrowed face. "Would it help if I asked nicely?" he asked, no apparent concern given to corporeal apprehension.

John shrugged and set himself up for a fall. Surely he could have picked a better time of year for this than winter. "Your transceiver okay in the water? Can your body keep it safe and dry?"

The hologram did not reply. He started off walking again instead.

John didn't have to struggle to keep up when his friend shared the same gait. "Sherlock," he called, trying to reclaim his attention where it waned, keeping close as the sparse clusters of pedestrians parted for the twins hurrying past on the pavement. That wasn't a good place to stop a conversation; that was not at all an ideal time to lose interest in his questions. Sherlock was a consummate liar but tended to prefer avoidance when easily applied. This seemed to be one of those times and John was not enjoying the implications that created in his mind.

"We have to say goodbye at the bridge," Sherlock offered as the road rose above the water under their feet.

That would make this one of the few times John hated to be right. "What? No. Why?"

"Because I can't buy you time if they know for a fact where you are," Sherlock explained, walking faster, his eyes constantly scanning the pavement before them. His nervousness was palpable, his anxiety shared. "Even if someone does see you jump, they'll have to split their offensive forces in order to keep tabs on us both. That's how you make your escape. Same as before. I'm your decoy, John."

"Then where do we meet up?" John asked, at least smart enough to know when a battle was already lost.

Sherlock forced confidence in his smile. "You know where. And if you have doubts, the memory stick will guide you."

Being purposefully vague could only mean one thing and John felt his pulse race even as their feet finally came to a stop approaching the midpoint of the bridge. Someone was approaching, something was going to go down and it was going to happen soon enough that their conversation was effectively at an end. And what had they said? Two years lost between them and only an hour at most regained and John knew nothing of what had transpired in that time. Was Sherlock safe? Was he in distress? Had he been a prisoner in all that time or a puppet, some manner of slave? What was his relationship with Moriarty and what did Sherlock's actions on Earth mean in the context of the other hologram's plot? What was going on in the boundless world that had kept spinning far away from the gravitation of Earth? John grabbed Sherlock's arm, afraid that in a moment everything would be lost again and unable to accept what had become normal and expected in a life that had seen Sherlock beside him again. He couldn't lose him now. Not yet. Not so soon after seeing him again.

"Are you safe?" he asked, all other questions not nearly as important as the one that had plagued him in the uncertain past. "Jesus, Sherlock, I don't anything about what you've been doing all this time."

Sherlock's fingers curled around his, his expression serious but soft around the edges in ways his own face rarely managed. "I'm safe and trusted enough to pursue these sorts of personal affairs. But he knows I'm not loyal. And there's nothing I can do to stop him from deleting me if the mood takes him."

John's grip tightened, fingers digging into the perfect mimicry of supple flesh. "What do I do?" he asked, unprepared to take inaction as an option.

"You're my ace, John," Sherlock said, gently stroking his cheek with his other hand. "You do what you were born to do. I have every confidence in you."

That wasn't an answer. That wasn't even being vague; it was platitudes. It was bullshit. John's grip tightened, capable of bruising if hologram's bled. But then there was screaming--not from either of them--and there were horns blaring and tires squealing loudly with the smell of smoke and burning. John turned to look but saw only white lights as a blue and yellow vehicle drove cross-ways across the lanes to collide with them both against the cemented rail. Sherlock's hands were suddenly pressed firmly against John's chest, no longer in his grip, and shoving with strength far exceeding his build. John did not fall, he _soared_. He could see above his feet the white headlights as they shattered on impact with the rail. He could see the traffic swerve and people run in terror as a short, middle-aged, average looking man took off through the streets, climbing over vehicles and dodging through traffic rather than continuing down the pedestrian path. It seemed to take ages for the sight to rise above him as he fell below, the street suddenly nothing more than a stretch of concrete held up by beams, his view of the underside growing more and more pronounced. The air was cold and moist and he could watch it rise like smoke from his lips and leave trails like aircraft in his receding wake. There was a very good chance he was going to die from this. People died all the time, though. For the first time in two years, at least he was living.

That didn't make impact hurt any less. It felt like he imagined it would have felt to have been struck by the police vehicle on the bridge. His head jolted, his back crunched, his neck forgot in what direction it bent. His body stung as though it were being eaten by billions of ants and that didn't even take into account the intense shock of the cold, winter waves. John wasn't entirely sure he was still conscious. The water was black--or perhaps he wasn't looking at anything at all. Pain echoed through him like screams in a cavern and his first gasp awarded him suffocation rather than air. He couldn't move for the pain and the shock and couldn't breathe or see or even think. There was no up or down. There was nothing; nothing but panic. He just had to make it to the ship--what ship?--just had to get to the surface and be found--by who? There wasn't time to get his bearings or to commit to the struggle. Had Sherlock just unintentionally murdered him in his haste to save him from the law?

Yes.

He had.

John couldn't command his fingers let alone force himself to swim. The ship would have to drag his corpse out from the waters once he floated to the top. Someone would, anyway, even if it wasn't the ship Sherlock had promised him. He couldn't do it. He was cold and choking and god, they weren't kidding when they said that drowning hurt. No matter how much he wanted to fight it, human bodies had their limitations. This was John's. There was nothing more he could do. Mortality was such a regrettable way to lose.

But there was something in the water. Whatever it was it was black as the void around him and groaned like a monster, the sound of it seemingly coming in from all sides including above and below. He could feel the way it pushed and pulled him, different from the waves and eerily constant in its tug. Was he going to be sucked up into something's propeller? Was there an intake pipe drawing him in that would suction up his guts through his belly button if his body blocked its path? Did things really need to get much worse than simply drowning? Drowning had honestly been bad enough. He hadn't even really had much time to accept the idea of drowning and to already be considering it preferable to other possibilities was a bit much for his cognitive processing speed. It was dark and cold and strangely loud and breathless and worse still was the awareness that the world was getting even darker, his body even colder, and that breath was starting to be less of a burning pain and more of a gentle regret.

Would he see Sherlock on the other side, he wondered? Probably not. They'd never really met in life after all. 

Hitting the ground was like being hammered in the back of the skull with a heavy plank and offered no comfort outside the absence of the water's chill. It was still black as pitch and his body still complained at a volume unsurpassed but he had weight again and air against his skin though still missing from his lungs. He coughed but found vomit instead, forcing it out through his mouth and nose to try and find a break in the passing of fluids to squeeze in a breathful of air. The struggle was hard but the rewards unsurpassed as the stale scraping of oxygen flooded into him around gasps and retching coughs.

When the lights turned on, they were blinding. When footsteps approached they fell like thunder against his skull.

"Four for four," a familiar voice called, her warm hand pressing his hair from his forehead. "Welcome back, John," Imogen said.

John nodded dumbly, still somewhat uncertain as to whether or not he had just died, as his body fell victim to its fatigue.


	24. Chapter 24

John was not a fan of the Black Manta's medical bay. Not because it was not much better than the facilities one might use as a school nurse or because it was only as effective as the idiot conscious enough to make use of it, but because more often than not it was John himself laying out on the cold, thinly padded hospital bed with Constance playing doctor as a reprieve from I Spy. It might be true that doctors make the worst patients but someone at some point in time should have also made the observation that pilots make for terrible doctors. A couple blankets, some towels, and a tank of oxygen were the height of Constance's prescribed medical treatment for hypothermia, shock, and near drowning. It was perhaps most annoying that she wasn't that far off. Some things really did take well to common sense in place of medical training. Either way, her beside manner was atrocious. She always made John feel quite lucky to make it out alive.

"Just like old times," the caustic pilot remarked, checking John's temperature once again as she hovered beside the raised bed. A tray of antibiotics lay beside her--all of them things John had requested and none of them supplies he cared for her to administer on his behalf. The Thames was a dirty river and a quick round of antibiotics would do him good. It also helped to not look completely incompetent when fulfilling his role as temporarily infirm doctor.

John shivered under the mountain of blankets piled over him, less because he was still frozen to the bone and more because she hadn't bothered to warm the thermometer before pressing it into his ear. He didn't need to see the results to know he was going to be okay. There was a definite difference between feeling like death was lurking in the shadows behind closed eyes and feeling as though one had just jumped off a bridge into freezing water. The former hurt but didn't have much concern for pride. The latter stung in all conceivable ways. John made a face, trying to turn his head away from the cold instrument in his ear. "Can't say these were my favorite memories."

"Liar." Constance removed the thermometer then leaned over to plant a warm kiss against John's cheek, the heat of her body cluing John into the fact he wasn't perhaps as warmed through as he thought. "If your body wasn't still traumatized, you'd be pitching a circus tent in your trousers," she joked, pressing his nearly dry hair from his forehead with an equally warm palm.

"Well at least you're not calling me a masochist at any rate."

"No, just the stupidest man we've ever met." Lestrade's face was working very hard at keeping back a smile though his voice was kind in its intention. From his perch along the limited counter space, the greying man still watched and waited to be instructed further in the means to aid John's recovery, a man always in service of others in the capacity most needed but not without a bit of bite when it came to tough love or managing the stupid. He was probably the most long-suffering man John knew when it came to his willingness to continue regardless. Two years was long enough to change a lot of things in people and circumstances. John was pleased that the years didn't seem to change Lestrade much. He was perhaps a bit more silver than simply grey but his countenance seemed the same. "Welcome back," the ship's captain extended to him with a softness in his eyes.

John nodded slightly, pulling his blankets tighter still. "Thanks, Captain. Have to say I'm surprised to see you lot again."

Lestrade shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest. "I know what you mean. I had my doubts that the man who contacted us was the real Sherlock Holmes but seeing as you're here now, I think it's safe to say we weren't deceived. You certainly do show up in the most unexpected places. Still, I never thought I'd see you again." 

"The feeling's mutual." John felt along his naked thigh beneath the covers, feeling stupid for not remembering that his wet clothes had been removed. He grimaced and looked around, spying an innocuous pile of cloth in the sink that looked near enough to what he imagined he might have been wearing. He nodded towards them, unwilling to point with anything more than his nose. "There's a memory stick in the front pocket of my slacks. Might want to give it to Michael. Sherlock said it'd help us do whatever it is we're meant to be doing next."

"I got it," Michael said, suddenly coming into view from seemingly nowhere as he hurried along to the sink. 

John lifted his head to look around over his cocoon to see who else was hanging around. Imogen smiled from the hall, waving her fingers at him quietly. They were all there--all of them except for Sherlock. The living members of the Black Manta crew together again after all these years. He'd dreamed of this. John had played memories back in daydreams and walked the corridors while asleep. Sherlock was an integral part of the life from which he'd been forced to resign but even without him, these people were home. Not quite family but more obnoxious than friends. Under the right medications, such a reunion might have moved him to tears. They were all still there and, from the look of it, they all still cared to know him. It was a bit much to take in given the past twenty-four hours. Heartwarming fell to numb amidst everything else going on.

"You should rest, John," Constance advised, pushing him to lay back with the blankets tucked in on his sides as Imogen left and Michael hurried back out of the room and into his technical bay across the hall.

John allowed himself to be set back but frowned at the further implications. If there was one thing it wasn't time for it was to be idle. His concept of the passing hours was flawed but time was certainly ticking by. "There's no time to rest," he said, glaring half-heartedly at the ceiling. "Holmes is looking for me. Everything's in motion and I still don't know what I'm meant to be doing."

"Well, hopefully you know where we're meant to be going. I've got us en-route to Deimos for now just to get us somewhere populated."

"Delphi," John instructed, without a moment's hesitation or lingering doubt. "It was the only place he ever mentioned in conversation and it was where we first ran into Moriarty. He's there. Somewhere. And if we're lucky, it's somewhere physical and not just some kind of hard drive in some backup server."

Constance and Lestrade shared a look above John's prone figure, a brief nod from the real captain sending the pilot from the room--presumably back to her post to correct their destination. Not being the captain was going to take some getting used to. John wasn't quite sure what his position was on the ship if not intended to take the lead. He supposed he was a guest now. A passenger. An unpaid informant. The Black Manta wasn't his ship even if in memory he'd always considered her to be. She was Lestrade's now--had been for far longer than she'd ever been John's. But it was weird to think of it that way, as if time had moved on for everyone else even when it had seemed to stand still for him. It still felt so much like nothing at all had changed even when logically everything had.

"Captain," Michael called from the other room, and John made a conscious effort not to move or make a sound that might appear as though he wished to still answer to the call. "I got the file loaded from the memory stick. It's a schematic."

Lestrade leaned forward to better shout across the room. "Let me guess: an interior schematic of Delphi?"

"Well, in as much as it's this big glowing white mass in the middle of millions of smaller glowing white masses. Captain, it's a _signal_ schematic. I'm looking at radio wave antenna everywhere throughout the asteroid belt including line-by-line wave traces that show signal boosters and relays from Earth to Neptune. It's like some massive web spanning almost the entire solar system."

Lestrade blinked his eyes a few times before his lips pulled back in a satisfied smirk. "Moriarty's transceiver matrix. No wonder the bastard's impossible to nail down." He looked over at John, sensing perhaps some small bit of confusion before engaging in a quick rundown. "Ever since we learned Moriarty was a hologram, we've been looking for his main server. Since he operates across the galaxy, we assumed he had to have a mobile base of operations in order to transmit his hologram signal effectively. The signal strength required otherwise would have made him an obvious target."

"Looks like instead he's been borrowing someone else's equipment, sending out a minute signal, and letting his network take care of the rest," Michael concluded, still shouting from the other room with all the manners of a four-year-old. "This is beautiful work, Captain. Really something."

"That's what happens when you abduct the brightest minds in the field," John interjected.

Lestrade nodded, pacing the medical bay slightly as he considered the implications. "Yeah, and he's made himself pretty damn bulletproof using arguably _the_ main spaceport as his base of operations. Can't go in guns blazing, can't blow it up, can't do damn near anything that wouldn't somehow involve civilian casualties. We need to tell the commissioner and--"

"That is the last thing we need to do," John growled, pushing himself up on his elbows despite the complaints from his back at the maintained position. He leveled Lestrade with an icy glare, doing his best to intimidate despite being a naked man in a blanket burrito. "You tell the commissioner and Sherlock is as good as dead. Again. And personally, I wouldn't put it past him to consider the complete destruction of Delphi an acceptable casualty if it meant destroying Moriarty. With the Simulants nearby, the propaganda machine can lay blame elsewhere and all their problems are over--all for the greater good."

"That's paranoid speculation," Lestrade remarked.

John smiled coldly, derisive laughter bubbling up from his chest. "He exiled me to Earth and placed me under constant observation all because I'm his brother's friend. No one is playing by the rules, Greg. And if Sherlock trusted his brother with this information, he'd have given it to him himself."

Lestrade looked at him hard, his intense gaze reminiscent of the commissioner's own calculating stare as he quietly weighed his options and opinions against presented facts. "What exactly do you suppose we should do, then?" he asked at length, somewhat bitter but certainly willing to be convinced.

To that aim, John wished he had a better answer. "I don't know," he admitted. "Sherlock said he needed me to do what I was born to do; I think he was worried someone would overhear us if he said anything more than that."

"Well, you are pretty good at buggering up hologram equipment," Michael yelled from the other room, still apparently four years old and still listening in while the adults talk.

John rolled his eyes with exaggerated annoyance. " _Really?_ Two years and you're still going to bring up Rhea?" he asked, unwilling to throw up his arms if only because they were quite happy under the blankets. He was never ever going to be allowed to live that down, it seemed. Never. It would be the epitaph on his gravestone: her lies John Hamish Watson, he didn't know what an EMP was. It wasn't exactly covered in basic training or considered much of an issue outside the operational capabilities of transmission devices. And _oh fuck_ but that was brilliant! "Michael, what would it take to--"

"I can transmit a transient electromagnetic disturbance right the fuck now," Michael promised, standing in the doorway with what could only be described as the biggest shit-eating grin in existence. "We retrofitted the Black Manta with an EMP transmitter around the time you left after we figured out we were targeting a holographic enemy."

Lestrade seemed to catch on to what they were speaking around, coming to the obvious conclusions that rose up from between the lines. "We don't want to damage any of the systems at Delphi but if we can disrupt one of the main relays in his web, maybe we can keep him from escaping before we get there and ensure a confrontation."

Michael nodded, giving Lestrade a mock salute as he started to run away. "I'll get with Imogen and see about isolating the target relays!" he called, his footsteps almost louder than him as he pounded away through the corridor.

Lestrade watched him go, his expression pensive and far calmer than that of their technician. "Well. That gets us on Delphi and definitely gets us Moriarty's attention. What happens then?" he asked, looking to John for more answers, past roles far too easy to fall back on.

For all his desire to offer more, John could only shrug before laying back down against the densely padded bed. "I have no idea," he admitted, smiling softly nonetheless. He closed his eyes against the overhead lights. "Let's hope I think of something before we get there."


	25. Chapter 25

John had never been more pleased to consider the non-physical aspects of going up against a holographic foe than in the moments directly following waking up without opiates in his system. It was almost enough to start doubting whether the man on Earth who had helped him escape had really been Sherlock after all. He _hurt_. He hurt _a lot_. On a scale from ant bite to child birth, John felt pretty sure someone should have congratulated him on a seven pound bundle of joy by now. It made sense why the old adage about jumping off a bridge was always meant to convey the height of stupidity. John had been injured in war and even that sounded preferable in memory to the throbbing pain still tearing through him. Sherlock was an asshole. It really wasn't fair that the other man wasn't there to fill with guilt at having brought tears to John's squinted eyes. But he would be eventually. John was going to make sure of that--so long as it didn't require him to run.

Or sit up.

Or move at all.

Or even breath, really. If he could take breathing as an option item, that would probably be for the best.

Sherlock was a grade A, absent-minded bastard. And John missed him all the more already with their reunion so painfully short lived.

Doing everything in his power not to cry out and bring undo attention to his distress, John gently pushed himself to sit up and slowly, slowly, every so slowly made his way to the cabinet where bottles of liquid pain relievers sat stocked in near full supply. Nothing felt broken at the very least. His muscles and tendons all but refused to cooperate without an accompanying spike of agony but at least there was nothing seriously wrong that time and a heavy dose of codeine and muscle relaxers couldn't eventually cure. There was time. Not much, but hopefully enough. It'd take days to reach the asteroid belt, some additional time to attack the broadcasting antenna floating through it, and only once they'd docked at Delphi would John really need to move. And quickly. Holmes was anything but an idiot and without their meaning to, they were almost sure to lead him right to Moriarty one way or another. So John would rest and take things slowly while the others managed their own ends.

He felt bad for Lestrade. The older man believed in the common good and in trusting the wisdom of those his senior. He believed that the government worked for the people and that through the many checks and balances no over arching form of corruption could hold power over the rest. What he took for strings being pulled by public opinion where just the shadows of the strings being worked by that very form of corruption he refused to believe in. In Lestrade's world the motto was 'no man left behind'; in the real one it was 'every man for himself'. John liked that idealized rationalism the inspector possessed and the way he pushed aside all forms of fantasy while still upholding somewhat antiquated beliefs in an almost sovereign authority. He'd wanted to tell Mycroft. He was choosing willful ignorance over insubordination in running silently towards the space station with no communication coming in or leaving out. And he was trusting John to make it worth it in the end with no promise returned that there was even much of a plan.

At the very least Michael and Imogen knew what they were doing. The optimum spot for taking down Moriarty's web was a target they easily found after reviewing the data Sherlock had given them, most of the work already done for them by the hand that lead them there. As long as they kept the signal from returning, Moriarty was stuck on Delphi. It might have been easier to somehow bait him out and try to retrieve Sherlock while the madman was elsewhere but only in this way could there be any closure to their struggle. And it would require closure either way. Because without Moriarty's hologram technology, Sherlock would be little more than a ghost again. This was potentially another death for him to face and the chance to rid the galaxy of James Moriarty came with the cost of returning ex-humans to the same restrictions of mortality as existing mankind. The timer would be reset for when Sherlock would have to admit defeat and face nonexistence at the merciful flip of a switch. They would never know the joys of sharing in that physical presence in retaliation for his freedom. Even if John somehow managed to defeat Moriarty without destroying his machines, Mycroft would never allow them to function. This was goodbye and the end in more ways than John had the patience to list. All he knew, without a doubt, was that there was no happy ending, just a less miserable future to survive. Best case scenario, he'd get to have Sherlock by his side for another year. Worst was that the last time he'd ever see him again was already a moment in the past.

Doped up and otherwise feeling fine, John pulled himself back to the stiff mattress that promised recovery over comfort. Everything else could wait for another day. Right now the only concern worth keeping to was becoming well enough to face it all when at last the moment arrived. He heaved himself up on stuttered, pained breaths and laid out with the blanket all but tangled at his feet. Too many memories either started or ended with him laid out or otherwise out of commission. Perhaps he was getting too old for this. However one looked at it, he was most certainly past his prime; past his prime and yet somehow still finding himself in the thick of it. But not alone. At least there was that. And with a deep, long-suffering breath, there was some comfort to take in that small concession as he spiraled back into deep sleep.

The Proteus tried to make contact several times. Continuing to choose ignorance over insubordination, they ignored each and every one. So it was hardly surprising to find the governing ship and most of its accompanying armada just outside the outer boundaries of Delphi's protected inter-space corridor. Not alone either. Simulant ships still clogged the spaceways with aggressive tactics keeping either side to their strict delineations. No matter what side John felt he and his were on in relation to the Simulants, it certainly felt as though the Simulant fleet was on theirs. Holmes and his minions were going to have to fight their way through if they wanted to join the Black Manta in the real fight on the Delphi space station. It wasn't time they had been banking on but it certainly granted momentary reprieve in seeing their opposition held back by someone else.

With Micheal and Imogen's task already completed, it was down to Constance now. She was already signaling down to Delphi for docking clearance, all other work successfully done. This was it and this was where everything could go wrong. Disturbing the hologram broadcast signal did nothing long term and only warned Moriarty they were coming. They had to get on Delphi and do it before anyone interfered if the half-formed plan they were going off of was going to work. Standing in the cockpit, letting nostalgia run the show, John almost felt ashamed for not feeling more anxious. But he was a betting man and he was all in. For the sake of the pot, a man was always ready to bluff his way to the win.

"Looks like Moriarty called in his troops," Constance said, zooming in on the battle which otherwise looked like black shapes and little red sparks on one of the fore displays. "We got Simulants fighting on the outskirts; going to keep Holmes out for a little while at least while his fleet deal with what's there. You've got a few hours, maybe. Could be less."

John shook his head. "Could be none. Holmes knew where we were going and what would probably be there to block him. He'll have sent a small squadron in from the Martian military installation. They'll be waiting. I'll be followed."

Lestrade's sigh was more along the lines of resignation than annoyance, his entire life's work achievements going up in flames like the junk cruisers that crashed into the shiny hulls of the armada's fleet. "How are we supposed to get you in to do anything with people likely waiting for you in the main dock?"

It was a very good question, and one which was perhaps bettered answered by yet another question: what would Sherlock do?

"Got any bright ideas, John?" Constance asked, the light on the comms dash flickering as a transmission waited for her to switch over.

John tried not to smile as he leaned casually against the back of her chair. "Constance, have I ever told you how alluring you'd look in drag?"

She looked over at him with a strange quirk to her brows then slowly smiled and gave a short, chortled laugh. "No shit. But you're binding me and buying me drink after, deal?"

John shook her hand, gesturing for Lestrade to join him as he hurried to the main supplies area, branching off to collect Micheal and Imogen on the way as they rushed to make one final adjustment to an already rather fluid plan of action. 

The trick of it, as Sherlock had demonstrated, was not to disguise the target but rather to confuse the hunter. Disguises only worked when they weren't expected and while a keen military unit might be looking for one man exiting the Black Manta who fit John's basic description but might be wearing a hat and glasses or some other form of deceptive wear, they most certainly weren't waiting with the expectation of five people of indiscriminate gender leaving the ship in matching, standard issue coveralls with each taking a separate direction in their scattered disembarkation. Constance was rather close to John in basic body shape after a few ace bandages flattened breasts into rather impressive pectorals. Imogen wasn't that far off either, her arms perhaps filling out the sleeves a little better than his own. Some padding to the hips and chest of the remaining male crewmen with hats pulled down over the brows and what left the Black Manta that day was not the known crew plus one but rather a completely unrecognizable assortment of five people, none of them staying together long enough for anyone to pick at their differences and make an educated assumption.

Constance took the direct route towards the hanger doors with Lestrade weaving in-between ships in a meandering path. Micheal did much the same in the opposite direction while Imogen hung back, her eyes on the lookout for anything suspicious. John simply followed a ways behind Constance, his attention more focused on walking with a more feminine gait than in worrying about who might be watching him. It was better to suspect everyone than try and worry about who was and who wasn't a threat. This wasn't a matter of hiding from any one person in particular. As far as John was concerned, the only person he cared to alert to his presence was probably the only person clever enough to figure out which of the crew he was. So it didn't matter. He just needed to get to the main lift outside the hanger doors and all concerns after that could wait till then. Because even if it was a decent enough plan, even if it was worlds better than drawing on a fake mustache or dressing up in Imogen's clothes, it still depended entirely on the quantity of officers waiting for him there and the instructions Holmes had given them on how to handle his assured presence on board. He very much doubted it was a 'shoot on sight' kind of situation he'd just thrown his friends into but the behavior of the other lawmen on Earth made him question just how much anyone really cared about his well being. It made his stomach clench for that very reason when a man took Constance by the arm and tried to pull her aside, his head dipping down close to her ear to speak softly to her in the crowd. He watched her pull away and the man grab at her again, the deep folds in the sleeve of her coveralls showing just how hard a grip he maintained. Stupid man. Didn't he know anything? If there was one thing a man was never allowed to do--

" _Fuck!_ "

\--it was to ignore a lady after she'd said 'no'. John was rather sure he'd remember that going forward seeing as her knee had just reintroduced his testicles to the rest of his body, slotting them back up from where they had fallen with all the grace and gentleness a man deserved after twice grabbing a strange woman in a crowd.

"How _dare_ you!" Constance shouted, the people around her drifting out in a small circle and no longer moving smoothly through the path but instead, predictably, gathering around the commotion to see what exactly the shouting was about. It made for an excellent distraction. 

John ducked and pushed his way through the slowly growing mesh of people, the density of their gathering bodies giving him even better cover than the previous flowing crowd. It also helped in letting him now he had his own tail to contend with. There was two ways to push through people and neither of them were quiet.

"Hey, watch it!" someone grumbled several feet behind John, not _at_ John but certainly in response to someone else pushing their way through to follow him. He fought the instinctive need to turn and look, reminding himself it didn't matter who it was, just that they didn't get in his way. He wasn't going to lose them; the crowd was packed but not so analogous that olive coveralls were going to blend in like camouflage in the forest. Their disguises may have made it so less people were following the right man, but it still left John with at least one person to handle on his own. His body wasn't ready to put up a fight yet. Functioning was fine but exertion was not much of an option. So when fight came to flight, John unfortunately knew what he had to do. He had to run. And he had to pray those lift doors were open because waiting wasn't anything near an option.

As soon as he pushed past the main congestion and into the less crowded halls, John ran. And so did his pursuer, as cries of outrage testified from people that had been standing in the way. The other person was probably younger than John, in better shape than John, not currently recovering from injury like John. He had a head start in his favor and that was pretty much it. That and the determination not to give up now. Not yet. Not here. John tried to weave between people, using his size to his advantage even though he had no evidence to suggest the person behind him was larger or more encumbered by his maneuvers. It made him feel better than to engage in a full on sprint towards an obvious destination. Especially a destination that was within his sights though the doors were closed and no one was near to call the lift to hanger floor. Someone could be getting off, though. There was still a chance. He had to believe there was still a chance.

His legs hurt. His chest hurt. He hadn't moved this much in weeks. Maybe they should have waited. This was their one shot after all. Just because Sherlock had chosen to get them together now didn't mean they needed to act just yet after all. It was far too late for that, though. They'd gone ahead and done it. And as John slammed himself against the lift doors, hand pressing the call button over and over as though his insistence would make any difference, he hated that in the end it all had come down to something as random as the timing of a lift that stopped them from going any further. 

"Where do you think you're going in such a hurry?" someone asked, voice gruff and authoritative, spoken by a man standing just behind him. John let his forehead rest on the cold metal of the closed doors, still pressing the button in faithless determination. Just another minute. If he only had another minute.

"Hey, out of my way!" someone else shouted. John looked over his shoulder to see who.

There were two men standing behind him, one large man in rather standard miner attire with his back to John and another just beyond him with clean-cut hair and military in his stance. The military man was hardly paying the big guy any notice, his eyes only on John as he tried to push past.

The miner was having none of that. He pushed Mr. Crew Cut back, getting in his face, serving as a flesh blockade as John stared in fascination. "I asked you a question," the miner said. "You stupid or something? You almost ran into me."

"I don't have time for thi-- _stop him!_ "

John heard the lift doors part as well as the stupid chime of a false bell. It was too good to be true but he wasn't about to question it. John got in and pressed the button to shut the doors with the same insistence as before, his eyes locked on the scuffle in the hall where the miner and military man seemed locked in a dominance contention. If he woke up to find that this had all been a dream, John wouldn't have been less convinced it hadn't just happened. But the doors did shut and the lift began to move and by some act of heaven John was alone inside with his pursuer left behind. Though it wasn't that miraculous he supposed. After all, he'd been invited, or at the very least his host knew he was going to come. Either Sherlock was in more control than John gave him credit for or Moriarty wanted to see him. Either way, someone had certainly done their best to make sure he'd gotten onto the lift.


	26. Chapter 26

There was a certain amount of etiquette involved in riding in a lift with a stranger. Stand at opposite ends, stare blankly ahead, smile politely but don't engage in conversation--the ride only lasts long enough for pleasantries besides. While Moriarty wasn't a stranger, he certainly wasn't John's friend. It was funny, though, how etiquette placed strangers at a further distance than an enemy, allowing for the same intimacies of space and speech that existed on the level of friends. It wasn't that John wanted Moriarty to stand to the far left and ignore him until they both stepped off onto the waiting floor but it was easier to consider the limitations of social graces in the company of a foe than to think on what this encounter meant for his chances now with subterfuge at an end. He wasn't surprised. They'd done nothing to hide their approach from the hologram so an encounter was guaranteed. He just didn't know if this was early, right on time, or perhaps even late. The plan was far too fluid to be bothered by details like 'when' so at the very least John didn't have to expend any energy in trying to look unconcerned.

Moriarty looked exactly the same as John remembered from their short but engrained meeting two years earlier. Being a hologram, it was possible he was even wearing the same suit. Neither he nor any other projection he made was prone to age so it made as much sense as anything so far as John had the patience to care. Either way, he still oozed with superiority, perhaps using the excess to slick back his black hair. He really was uncomfortably alike to Holmes in ways John felt sure neither would appreciate to be told. They both made John feel like a child being allowed to sit at the grown-ups table while everyone else ignored him or begrudgingly pre-sliced his food. He was tolerated, his presence nonthreatening and only barely considered to be of any practical use. But the hologram had come to collect him. Non-threatening child though he might be in the eyes of geniuses, he was still important enough to be ushered in.

"I see you got Sherlock's message," Moriarty said, standing much closer than necessary, his smile smarmy and tone overly playful. "I'm sure he'll be pleased. Or, rather, he _would_ be pleased but I think we can do without his interference for now. He'd only be obvious and where's the fun in that?"

John grimaced on impulse though he wasn't certain why. Moriarty had more or less just said that Sherlock was fine in the cracks between the spoken lines. He'd had some hope he wouldn't be doing this alone, though. It was much easier to simply follow Sherlock's lead than imagine he knew what the other man intended. "You knew about this?" he asked, clearing his throat of the nervousness that choked it closed around his words.

Moriarty's amusement was palpable. "I knew he was going to try and bring you here to stop me. That's the thing about owning a pet, though, John; you've got to let it go out and play now and then. I wasn't entirely sure he'd manage to get you here, what with big brother hanging around, but it's not the first time I've underestimated him. Not that I have to remind you."

The elevator stopped with that remark, the flutter of John's innards as momentum ceased being not that unlike the feeling he normally felt at the thought of James Moriarty. Killer, kidnapper, saboteur. John's chest ached with bile at the flippancy of the hologram's regard. But it did not set his blood to boil. 

Outside the parting lift doors was a much more spacious area than John had expected a hologram to require. He could immediately understand why he'd chosen it, though. With seating, control consoles, and wall panels of dials, readouts and screens, there was no mistaking it and no question at all as to what made it suited to the hologram's needs. This was Delphi's original cockpit back when the outpost had been first constructed, the part of the structure that had been piloted into position before on-sight construction had taken place. John had heard about it once as a boy in one of the history books boasting of human ingenuity. Delphi had been a marvel in its time of pre-fabricated construction and easier than building large vessels for the purpose of towing was outfitting the largest pieces with their own means of propulsion. There were fuel tanks refitted as waste units and other recycled parts repurposed to fitting ends. But this was a temporary bridge, an auxiliary command post, a panic room for the current command. While it couldn't pilot the base around, it probably still had links to the final construction's main functionalities like communications-- _assuredly_ communications. And no one would ever bother to check the all but forgotten spot with no life readings perceivable besides. 

The technology was old, though. Stepping into the room was like stepping through time. The screens were tiny compared to the ones used now and the resolution was fuzzy to say the least. The buttons on the screen used the American spelling of caliber and maneuver. It reminded John of the way space ships looked in the movies he watched as a kid. It was a strange place to feel nostalgic when he knew he was staring at the place where Sherlock had long ago been stolen away to. This was his prison; he was standing in a room surrounded by computers that held the combined genius of Moriarty, Sherlock, and quite possibly the emancipated scientists as well. Hopefully, with any luck, it would not also be their grave.

"So, how are you going to do it? Stop me?" Moriarty asked, dragging his hand against the back of the captain's seat as he wandered through the small room. Disinterested though he appeared to be, he never truly seemed to let John out of his sights. "You have one of those clever little EMP devices on you to destroy my servers directly? Or just going to blow them up somehow? I'm not going to let you, obviously, but I'm curious as to what exactly you were planning to do here by yourself and what either of you thought it would achieve. I mean, honestly, do you think I'd let you and Commissioner Holmes get this close and not have a contingency plan instated? You both can blow this entire place to debris and it wouldn't matter in the slightest--with one exception."

John's jaw clenched instinctively. "Sherlock?" he asked, though the answer was clear.

Moriarty shrugged. "He has a thing about being copied. Sentimental, really. It was humoring him that lost me this base, though, so it seems fitting his fate should be tied to it. He only exists here. Makes it much more interesting to consider his current wager knowing the only real effect is his demise."

"I'm not here to destroy anything," John told him, though he still wasn't one hundred percent on what he needed to do. What was he born to do? What was the one thing Sherlock could depend on him for that should be so obvious as to go unmentioned? Of all the little things they'd said, what was the final clue?

The hologram smiled, still oozing, still a prick. He took a seat at the helm and spun playfully, legs kicked up to cross at the knee. "You mean the good soldier who still dreams of the battlefield isn't here with vengeance on the brain? You've gone soft, Johnny Boy. I know for a fact you're not smart enough to figure out how to copy his files to simply escape with him like this was some kind of rescue mission. So if you're not here to destroy me, what purpose do you have?" If he meant it as a question, he certainly wasn't wasting time on waiting for an answer. He shrugged, droopy eyes masquerading with false sincerity. "None, I suppose," he ho-hummed. "You're on their side. Well, sorry to disappoint you, but Holmes's reign is at an end. It's amazing what can happen in two years. I have over a thousand converted Simulant holograms waiting for my signal in every space station, mining outpost and lunar facility in the galaxy. The gentleman upstairs who kept you from Holmes's hands? One of my loyal servants. The current government has had more than enough time and chances to make amends but instead they're still fighting on the wrong side of progress. Simulants and holograms will be given proper recognition--not as members of the human race but as humanity's superiors. And you're not one of us, John. You're one of them. Just a frail, mortal, extinguishable man."

"A man Sherlock brought here to stop you," John reminded him, his mind past reeling and instead focusing only on the now.

Moriarty smiled. "I already told you that you can't."

And yet somehow, without a doubt, John felt sure that he _could_. Because if he couldn't, the war was never going to end. If he couldn't, Sherlock was never coming back. If he couldn't do this while standing in the room from which it all started from with the mastermind himself looking on, then who could? He was Sherlock's ace and he was born to do this. And John Watson's skills were not limited to those of a soldier. 

"I'm telling you right now that I can," John stated, loose ideas forming into coherency as he spoke. "I can give the Simulants the part of their desire that you can't. I can make most of them loyal to me and take away your ability to rule by terror for the next decade at the very least. And it just so happens that the only place I can do it from is right here if you can answer me one simple question: have your people already repaired the satellite relay my ship took down?"

The hologram looked intrigued, his thin brows arching questioningly. "Not fixed but bypassed. Why?"

"No. You either let me try or you don't get to know why Sherlock chose me of all people to come here to try and fix things," John explained, playing his own cards close to his chest. His pulse was racing. "You already risked this base to Commissioner Holmes just to watch Sherlock bring me this far. Do you really want to go the rest of your immortal life not knowing what this was all for?"

The ensuing pause was brief but still long enough to make John sweat as he watched the impassive face of the madman playfully weight the options. "Alright. Show me," he consented, leaning back in his captain's chair.

It was still too early to celebrate. John moved around the legacy bridge, finding the communications array easily seeing as it was the only station with updated screens and inputs. Moriarty swiveled in his chair to observe him as John poked at the few selections he knew. "There a specific frequency I need to use to make priority announcement?" he asked.

"Default B is broad spectrum," Moriarty instructed. He smirked. "You intending to make an announcement to the entire galaxy?" 

John shrugged, not feeling all that inclined to affirm the obvious. He was busy besides. 

The comms system wasn't all that different from the one on the Black Manta and though John hadn't utilized it much himself, it was still a rather intuitive system of point, click and speak. Red lights meant it was active and the little lines on the audio selection showed whether he was speaking loudly enough. He didn't bother worrying too much about the other things. He knew the signal could reach Earth because that was where Sherlock had been broadcast to, and he knew it could reach at least as far as Titan since that was its limitations three years before. He'd be heard. He just needed to hope that he'd be listened to as well.

Clicking the broadcast button, John watched as the green light turned red. His palms felt clammy as they gripped the cold sides of the mouthpiece close to his lips. "This... is a public health announcement," he said, licking his lips as he prepared himself to take on this new role of authority. "At this time, we are issuing a direct order for the immediate cessation of all operations outside the inner solar system. Several cases involving an unknown pathogen have been reported in mining installation and are believed to be responsible for the rise in Simulants and Simulant activity. At this time, infection is limited to facilities outside the asteroid belt and therefore an immediate quarantine is being issued until preparations can be made for an approved evacuation. Military scientists are currently researching a treatment but until such time, there will be no further exploratory or enterprise operations in deep space. There is no cause to panic but this is a very serious matter. Further instructions will follow shortly. Thank you." He clicked the button to end the broadcast and watched the light return to the ready green.

The room was quiet for a moment. John double checked everything to make sure he wasn't still somehow on the air, clicking the default settings off just in case some issue remained. Behind him he could hear the gentle tutting of disapproval from the man in the captain's seat. John leaned against the console as he turned to face him, trying not to show his own fears as they were reflected in Moriarty's mockery.

"Interesting. Certainly... unique. But that only works so far as Holmes's approves, Johnny Boy. All he has to do is have outposts apologize to the locals for any confusion and all you've managed is a bit of airway piracy," the hologram explained, his hands crossing behind his head as he smiled at the poor, delusional fool before him.

John shrugged it off. "Yeah, I'm sort of banking on him ignoring his pride here, but I just handed him that elusive third option that no one else apparently thought existed. Simulants want humans to stay out of deep space until human welfare can be trusted in the hands of enterprise, our government is so tied to corporate interests it's got its hands tied even in the face of evil, and you... well, fuck you in all honesty. But maybe when we stop fighting against Simulants and thinking of them as less than human, holograms can have a chance to be seen as more too. If Holmes runs with this, everyone wins. And the war still ends."

"You think Simulants will abandon their desire for revenge that easily? Especially considering all you've attempted to do is help cover up what was done to them and by who with your little lie?"

John paused to think about that, finding it to be perhaps the easiest for him to understand from his position in this mess. "I think most Simulants are still men and women no different from me. And like me, while they might still want revenge, more than anything they just want it to be over."

Moriarty's dark eyes shone with that, his smile creeping wider at admissions that fell well within his radar. John didn't care. Yes, he hated the man. But there were so many more important things in life than hate to motivate a person day by day.

There was a loud, strong tone from the speakers that nearly sent John out of his skin. While still surprised, Moriarty was less affected. He eyed the speakers, his smile still evident, some manner of verdict promised with the emergency broadcast warning playing out before the report. Too soon. Like a swiftly decided jury, there was rarely good news to be had in hasty deliberations. There was no consolation in the idea that, whatever happened, John could still attempt to barter for his friend's life. He didn't have a contingency plan. Until a few minutes ago, he hadn't had a plan at all. Not one to be proud of, anyway.

The tone ended and the message began, the man's voice unknown but confident in his speech. "This is Dr. Wolfram Bram of the Nerio Military Installation. In coordination with the evacuation efforts, we ask that all vendors and travelers of the Delphi space station please make arrangements to return to Earth by week's end. If you do not have the means to do this, we will issue-"

John didn't really hear the rest of the message. Moriarty's slow clap was all the sound he needed to understand exactly what the announcement now meant.


	27. Chapter 27

The message over the radio said all John needed to hear. The martian military base was ready to assist in both evacuation and with the false quarantine John had ordered with nothing said to contradict the validity of his impromptu announcement. They were going along with it it seemed. At least as far as Delphi was concerned. John doubted very much that it would be this easy to get his wishes granted into the known reaches of space but this was still a sign of cooperation and a wrench, however small, thrown into Moriarty's gears. And it was small. He knew that. But what else was he to do?

An immortal army a thousand strong. It wouldn't take even half that many Simulant holograms to stage a violent coup. On a ship, a space station, on any man-made habitat that required machines to assist in maintaining a safe living environment for humans, the kind of weapons needed to take out an enemy made of energy could do untold damage, dooming the lives of the living just as much as the actions of the solid hologram could. If he wasn't bluffing, Moriarty had at his command the most terrifying military force in modern history. It suddenly made sense why now, after two years, Sherlock had finally sought John out. Moriarty was a large-scale contender now; a true threat even against the likes of Commissioner Holmes. Humanity lived and operated in Moriarty's world--a world so dependent on technology that there was no viable option to fight against it without mass casualties. Retreating back to Earth was the only option. It didn't take machines to breathe there; it didn't require thick, air-tight hulls to keep people alive. One could disrupt huge areas with the kinds of systems that disabled holograms without causing much more than an inconvenience to the people living around it.

It was the only way as far as John could see. And it did absolutely nothing about the fact that he was deep inside the forgotten cockpit of the original Delphi rig with the very hologram that deemed himself a god and had built himself an army of believers.

Moriarty's mocking clap gave way to silence as the seated man continued to observe John with eyes that were simultaneously wild and subdued. Like a tranquilized mental patient, the brown eyes of the hologram seemed lost in concentration on some far away madness contained in the form of his current fixation. The smile didn't help any with John's confidence either. "Good. Very good," the hologram said, his tone remaining sing-song despite the surprising turn of events. His hands rested on the armrests of his chair like those of a throne, his posture not regal so much as unconcerned by anything outside of himself. "If Holmes actually follows through, that's maybe... let's say half of my forces who'd rather fold than seek revenge. Hardly problem solved. And what exactly are you planning to do about me?"

"Nothing," John admitted, his mouth dry as he leaned against the console to try and at least appear calmer than he felt. "You and Sherlock... well, if anyone's going to take you down, it's him, not me. Even I'm not stupid enough to think I can actually compete at this level alone."

Moriarty's smile grew deeper like a Cheshire cat's. "You overestimate Sherlock's importance," he mewed.

"I believe in him is all."

Moriarty shrugged, his hand brushing inside the breast of his jacket only to remove from concealment the polished barrel of a handgun. "Your faith in him isn't going to save you right now, though, is it?" 

Was it real? Was it a hologram like himself? In the end, did it even matter? John wasn't sure he'd care to bet his life on whether or not a gun made of light was able to also kill him with an energy blast made of much the same. Moriarty was deadly with or without the obvious threat in hand. Even without a gun on John, he still had Sherlock more or less hostage in the servers around them.

"Sherlock's of no use to you if I'm dead," John reminded him, licking his lips as he tucked them thinly over his teeth. "I don't know what you two have been up to over the years but it doesn't take more than a day to figure out where Sherlock and I stand."

The hologram laughed soundlessly, his face bright with mockery as his smile wrinkled his face. "You ever dream of him in my bed, prisoner to my desires, being taught the heights of pleasure his new body can achieve at my command?" he asked, the devilish draw of his brows just as playful as his voice. 

Maybe it was the way he said it, the way he jumped to those conclusions from the barest of incitements, the knowing tone with which he played so simply in the realms of mortal paranoia, but whatever the trigger the hologram had strummed, it set John's jaw tight with an anger he knew his whole face was set to display. His knuckles were white in their grip on the console's rim and he could feel himself vibrating with restraint.

Moriarty tisked and shook his head. "So base, John. So predictably sentimental."

"Are you going to shoot me or not?" John ground out through clenched teeth.

The mastermind shrugged, looking over the weapon in his limp grasp. "I don't like to get my hands dirty," he mused, sounding bored again as he sighed and turned his attention across the room. John's eyes followed slowly, darting back to the gun now and then to remain mindful of its threat as he otherwise watched a diamond-shaped bit of machinery float up from a table on the other side of the small room. 

In the barest of moments, a second hologram was in the room with them, the tall figure of Sherlock Holmes blinking wildly for a moment as though awaking and adjusting to the new levels of light. The confused expression on his face gave a pinch to his bushy brows as he looked at Moriarty and then, with a flash of surprise and mild alarm, at John. He only took a moment for himself to pause and assess the mood and threat of the room he was now in. It was more than enough for the likes of him, John felt. And more than that it was very, very good to see him again.

"Welcome to the party," Moriarty sang in greeting, swiveling in his chair to face their hologram companion.

Sherlock scowled lightly, his steps echoing as he crossed from the far side closer to the two of them. "We're shooting our guests now, are we?" he asked, his demeanor perfectly calm though John suspected inside he was anything but.

Moriarty shrugged, his lips pouting slightly in conjunction. "Just trying to have some fun," he explained, somewhat childlike in his interaction. His bored expression remained as his voice deepened curiously. "Here," he said, "you take it," and tossed the gun in his hand towards Sherlock who easily caught it in the air. "It's more interesting that way," he explained as he sat up in his seat once again.

Sherlock eyed the weapon in his hand, his eyes growing narrower by the second. "Why?" he asked, though his premature irritation said he knew exactly why.

"Because you're going to kill John Watson," came the obvious response. "I let you have your fun and now it's my turn."

Sherlock shook his head and set the gun down, not willing to even pretend to play along as they all stood in conference. "I'm not going to hurt him," he stated, eyes averted from either of them. 

Moriarty hummed with amusement. "You like feeling alive, Sherlock? Like all those tastes and smells and complex textures? I'm the only reason you could even hold that gun in the first place. Now, I put my entire plan on the line just to humor you. And you were right, Sherlock, it was fun. But it's time now for a new game. And the rules are 'no mortals allowed'."

That seemed to trigger something in the detective as Sherlock's eyes grew wider for a moment, his posture still and erect. "John stopped my brother?" he asked, with more than a little surprise evidenced in his face.

"Mmmmm.... maybe. I wouldn't call peace in our time a certainty but he did far better than I thought he would."

"Then you've lost," Sherlock challenged.

Moriarty shook his head. "I still have an army, Sherlock. And I still have every reason to continue undermining the recognized world authority. I haven't lost anything I wasn't prepared to lose. I still have a purpose. I still have my means. That's more than can be said for you."

John wondered if this was how it was long ago when the three of them first met behind closed doors in a time memory had never held to. There was Moriarty with all the cards in hand, in control of the situation, at the heart of the conflict and in command. Then there was John--completely ineffectual and at most existing to be used against the madman's true intended target. And, coerced into it all and standing at its center, Sherlock Holmes with nothing but a tenuous grasp on the few of his options that he could even conceive of. Even at that time, Sherlock's objective had not only been to survive the altercation but to ensure John's survival too. His belief in John's worth had been part of what had made him lay beneath him on the bed as sacrifice. It was a rather bizarre holy trinity, really, with a god-like father and a son made in his image with John existing outside it all like an intangible, spectating ghost, mentioned in name but given to little action. This wasn't his story. Which, sadly, made it far more feasible for him to die.

Sherlock's eyes lingered on the weapon, his long fingers stroking along the smooth barrel and down the grooves of the energy chamber. "So either I kill John or you delete me and are then likely to kill John anyway?" he asked, slowly turning his chin to once again look their enemy in the face.

Moriarty shrugged with his palms up in apology. "It's not as elegant a scheme as yours but not everything needs to be. I'm willing to compromise, of course. Once he's a hologram, he'll share our cause."

" _Your_ cause."

"I don't see you complaining about the benefits," the mastermind reminded him. There was a hint of something darker in his voice, the joking tone fading away under a far more sinister air. "Even if John does get his way and the outer solar system is evacuated, there's still plenty for us to do. We've got a whole new line of clientele--rich, powerful, _angry_ businessmen--who will have a vested interest in the future of space and technological advancements. Holmes might want to stamp out hologram research but the commercial value of a workforce that doesn't need air, food, or any legal protections is sure to pique the interest of the business elite."

"You'd sell out your kind to have them become the slave laborers of the new frontier?" John caught himself asking, no longer stuck in silence as his gaze oscillated between the two holograms in charge.

"I'd still own the technology," he explained without concern. "I'd only be sharing out the necessary while keeping for myself the true secrets of immortality. And then watch as others build my empire for me, fashioning an entire race that will have no choice but to unite under me as their lord and master. One way or another, John, I win. In fact, things might even work out better for me this way."

"And you want me here to watch you," Sherlock concluded, his expression sour.

Moriarty nodded. "I enjoy your company."

Sherlock's short laugh said the truth was anything but. "No, you don't," he corrected, his hands delving into his trouser pockets as he leaned back on his heels. "You enjoy my opposition. That's what this whole interlude has been about. Life is boring without a challenge to face now and again. This is twice now John and I have made your life more interesting by thwarting your immediate plans. My brother may be your main adversary but he's nothing more than a name to you. Untouchable. He doesn't engage you the way I do. There's no... _rapport_. If I were to stay with you, what then? You'd get bored of me again. And this time, instead of a wager, there'd be nothing left to do but simply delete me. So why even bother with that road again when we could start off with the fun part instead."

"By letting you both go."

John blinked at that, feeling as though he'd missed something along the way and very uncomfortably aware he was listening in to a conversation that drew on knowledge only the other two shared. He hated the intensity in which he both wanted to know and desperately did not want to know the details pertaining to those two lost years.

"You could operate nearly transparently without me there to stop you," Sherlock said, continuing on in the same vein as Moriarty in which neither of them paid John any mind or felt inclined to clarify for his benefit. "Almost no one would notice. No one would be there to appreciate how cleverly you'd constructed your plot. Everything would happen exactly the way you wanted it to with no variation or challenge. You need me, Jim. Because there's more to our afterlife than simple appeasement. Let us go and the game could conceivably go on forever."

"Let me guess: you not only want John to live but for me to hand over the quantum-light hologram technology too for yourself. It's always take, take, take with you, isn't it?"

Sherlock was very quickly at Moriarty's side, his movements graceful rather than jerky as he leaned in, hands against the armrest of the captain's chair as his face dipped close to his ear. "I ended my life and spent two years of my _after_ life doing things your way to prove a point. Why not two years my way? We can reconvene after, discuss the future, and see how much longer we wish to continue."

"All to give you further chances to get in my way," Moriarty summarized, smiling up at Sherlock with neither of them giving any consideration of personal space or thought to the fact that if they were able to, they would be breathing in each other's breaths.

"All to stave off the inevitable boredom that being clever ensures," Sherlock corrected.

John was starting not to mind the idea of either of them shooting him if it meant they would stop looking at each other like that. Hell, if they kissed, he'd do it for them.

Which was perhaps the greater blessing in the fact that they didn't, that Moriarty instead leaned back in his chair with his wild eyes still untamed but somewhat appeased in their madness; that Sherlock stood straight and squared his shoulders with authority and neither made motion towards of mention of the gun again.

"Alright," Moriarty said, fingers drumming on his knee. "Two years. Ish."

"Two years _at least_ ," Sherlock challenged, a small smile on his lips.

The hologram mastermind chuckled under his breath but nodded in quiet agreement.


	28. Chapter 28

Michael was thrilled to get his hands on a quantum light hologram generator even if it was, by necessity, kept out of his direct control. Moriarty would share his technology but not his secrets, keeping a tight grasp on his sole claim to immortality though this extension was more than generous in this case alone. It was his scientist that installed it into the Black Manta's hologram unit, who made sure that Moriarty had privileged access to the systems that overrode anything Michael could hope to attempt, and allowed for the safe transfer of Sherlock Holmes back into the ship's computer with an unspoken threat in the reminder that he could take him back just as easily again. Sherlock was on loan so to speak; he belonged to the same world as Moriarty. So tenuous was this allowance that John almost hesitated to look at his friend, afraid the moment his eyes lingered on the sight of him back among them on the Black Manta it would cause it all to revert to the way it had been and see Sherlock lost to Moriarty once more. 

John's body vibrated with anxious energy as he watched and waited in the hallway for the hologram of one of the murdered scientists to finish assisting Micheal in the final set-up. Sherlock was already turned on, standing there, assisting in his calibrations with feedback of his own as he tested his senses with sliding touches against metal and pinches and prods against his own skin. It was taking ages even if it was only taking hours at most. There was plenty John knew he could be doing other than standing in the hallway waiting to be told everything was fine and operational but nothing that felt as important as being there to settle his own nerves. Not that they felt inclined to settle. For the first time in memory, everything he had ever wanted was standing in the other room with all the accouterments of life. No more pretending with an arm around a pillow, no more ignoring the things that couldn't be changed. They _had_ been changed. And part of him was terrified that nothing in their reality could live up to the hype set by their prior means of getting by.

Sherlock could turn the pages of his own books now. 

There was something sick in how frightening it was to feel that loss of dependency. It redefined more than just their relationship but also the purposes they'd defined for themselves, by themselves. The reality was so much scarier than the fantasy. And things hadn't even really started yet.

"The Commissioner wants to speak with you on the Proteus," Lestrade said as he approached down the hall from the front of the ship, his expression pleased rather than tired as it usually was when delivering such words. He leaned against the wall beside John, peeking in to see that Sherlock really was there with more than a little pride seeping out through his smile as he crossed his arms over his chest with a sigh. 

John echoed the sound, though his own was fueled with tired hesitation. "I don't think that's going to happen. Chances of me punching him again are high. Very, very high."

"I don't doubt he knows that. But given what you've been up to, it appears he's willing to risk it."

"Or waiting to arrest me again," John corrected, not even close to joking as he said it. He at least would have earned it this time. Hoping to get off any piracy or conspiracy charges on the basis of time already served was hardly worth hoping for. The future he wanted was finally within his grasp and still there were things that could pull him away. Sherlock's situation wasn't all that different from his own. They may have had different puppet masters but they were still both being jerked around on strings. He grumbled, bitterness tinging every syllable. "He's not going to approve of this, you know."

Lestrade shrugged, his eyes still looking on ahead towards the holograms hard at work. "I don't see why he needs to know about your personal business."

"Personal business? Greg, we've got a dead, fugitive scientists on our government-owned ship installing illegal technology that is operated by the Commissioner's arch enemy."

The security officer only bothered to shrug again, letting his arms fall from his chest to instead rest against his hips. "Commissioner Holmes isn't the man who saved the crew of the Endeavor 1. And he isn't the one who not only rescued Sherlock but got the Simulants to pull back from Delphi space while evacuation orders are being worked out. So, honestly, what quantum light generator? I don't see anything. And neither does anyone else on this ship. It's just our normal hologram system and we're all just lucky things worked out the way they did."

It was almost enough to cause John to choke up slightly, his throat constricting around an emotion he wasn't comfortable with feeling, let alone expressing. He pursed his lips, his brows narrowing to hide beneath their false canopy of irritation. It was a beautiful sentiment, really, but that's all it was in the real world. He couldn't let them do that even if they wanted to. He couldn't involve them more than he already had. "No one is ever going to buy into the lie that you guys had no idea we're working in close connection with Moriarty, even if it's true that we're doing so in opposition."

"No," Lestrade said, "I agree. But I'd rather be seen as an enemy and have a chance to be a hero than give up and do nothing just to save my reputation."

John clenched his teeth and took a deep breath through his nose, eyes focusing on nothing in order to keep his composure in line. He could hug that man. And they probably both knew it. And it wouldn't make a difference to either of them if he did but John still preferred to keep his distance and instead did his best not to react at all. He'd never really had friends he felt he could trust. Not to this extent. Not when the plan, up to a few moments before, had been to shove them all off the ship and make a run for it--he and Sherlock alone. It was almost certainly more generous to them than their continued association with Moriarty's official party crashers. And maybe they didn't know he was planning to abandon them, but certainly they knew what it still meant to be involved with them even after all this. And they chose John and Sherlock over Queen and country.

Together then. Give the firing squad a bit of a selection when standing them in a row. Or give the Commissioner, at the very least, an assortment of examples of a functioning conscious to perhaps drive them back into the sort of favor that pardoned treason with a slap on the wrist.

"Not on the Proteus," John ordered, sure they could all agree to that much. "We can discuss things with the Commissioner ship-to-ship at a fair enough distance. I need to know what he plans to do about my little announcement anyway," he admitted, though there was still a strong part of himself that would rather run away than risk anything that might cause him to lose Sherlock again.

Lestrade nodded, still seeming to possess far too pleasant of a disposition for someone aiding and abetting in a crime. "Shouldn't be too difficult to set up. I'll let him know, Captain," he said as he pushed up off his lean against the wall beside him.

John blinked and turned his head to follow, frowning slightly as the title he'd used failed to go unnoticed. "I'm not--"

"We took a vote," the security officer interjected, smiling just slightly as he continued to walk away. "It was unanimous. Deal with it."

Deal with it. Right. John let this head roll back and stared up at the metal sheeting of the ceiling where evenly spaced rivets and smooth soldering made for attractive seams that stretched along the junction of metal vaultings and wall. His walls. His rivets. His ship with his illegal wares. It was a small smile that pulled at his lips but a smile nonetheless. For a brief moment it didn't matter that he was still scared shitless under it all. In this moment, everything was perfect. His life's goals were no longer centered on retrieval but on retention. Surely it would be easier, the single optimistic bone in his body assured. Holding on to something was so much simpler when it was there within your grasp.

"You look happy," Sherlock said as his steps quietly approached, bringing the bounce of dark curls into John's upwards sights.

John allowed himself to smile more genuinely in his presence, unable to fight against that joy even when so much weighed on him still. He looked into those silvery eyes that were already shifting towards a minty shade of green on the back of mottled grey and saw the only clue that existed that he was made of light and not flesh and blood: the lack of his own reflection in the gloss across his eyes. "May as well be while I can," he mused, half trapped in the other man's shadow. Sherlock leaned close beside him, tall and slender as a tree, his shoulder taking up most of John's natural sight while his chin remained raised to spy above him.

Sherlock hummed in agreement, hands in his pockets while he looked down the hall, their wandering gaze continuing in playful avoidance. "I take it my brother is wasting no time at all in following up on our activities."

"None," John confirmed. "Greg's working out a good time to call right now."

"Then let's not waste time. The longer we remain silent, the more curious my brother will be as to what kept us."

Right to business. No time to chat. He was right, of course--Sherlock was _always_ right--but with one thing after another, after another, after another... "Right... right. Let's... let's get going then." John stood up from his slouch against the wall, starting to walk as though to the gallows towards the cockpit and its communications array.

"John?"

John paused and looked behind him. "Yeah?"

Sherlock caught up to him in hardly half a step, his hand reaching out to claim John's in the large pocket of his palm. He pulled him closer by it, his neck bending, his chin tilting his face to the side as he took up every breath of space that had once existed between them. John closed his eyes and gravitated towards him as well. His lips were soft and pliant and held chastely closed but there were sparks enough behind shuttered eyes to not care in the least the manner in which Sherlock kissed so long as he was kissing him.

John tightened his hold on his hand, grasping tightly to him least he disappear again. "You and me have... a _lot_ to talk about," he told the crest of Sherlock's bottom lip, their noses pressed against each other's to linger in the embrace their lips had lost. 

"I know," Sherlock whispered. "And it can wait. But that couldn't."

"Yeah. No," John agreed, already disapproving of the growing space between them as Sherlock straightened up, only his hand remaining close enough to touch and even that falling away in the break of their lovers' caress. And they would be lovers this time, not just the closest of friends. Of the many things left up for them to discuss, what they'd wanted from each other in a world where love was more than just a possibility was by far the least confusing among the lists of lesser things. "So, what are we supposed to tell the Commissioner happened, exactly?" he asked, trying to remember more than just the warmth of his lips and the way his cheek resisted against the ball of his nose.

Sherlock shrugged his face, pulling John to follow as the began to walk again. "The truth, more or less. He doesn't need to know we made a case for my freedom and borrowed corporal form but your actions can remain intact up until the point where I suppose we simply say that Moriarty ran away."

"Right. That'll make it easy enough." He certainly didn't relish the idea of trying to get away with an outright lie to the man who seemed to otherwise read his thoughts. The truth wasn't exactly straight forward anyway. There was more to say about Sherlock's foresight than in John's own personal ingenuity at the time. He couldn't even remember anymore what had sparked the idea in him to take the approach of the doctor and not the soldier against their enemy. But Sherlock had known and had trusted him to figure it out when it was time. He somewhat doubted Holmes would find such a thing believable. If even the truth seemed questionable, perhaps it was all the better to divert from the lie. "How did you know I'd figure it out, anyway?" John couldn't help but ask, his own curiosity at stake for the time being as they continued through the ship.

"Figure what out?" Sherlock questioned, then after a pause shook his head. "John, I had no idea what was going to happen. I just knew that I couldn't do it without you. If you were to put three geniuses in a room and tell them to plot an escape, they would come up with truly complex and amazing ideas, but it's the everyday man that thinks to see if the door is even locked to begin with."

John all but tripped over his own feet. "So when you told me to do what I was born to do, you weren't just being vague, you literally hadn't the _slightest idea_ what I could do to fix this?" 

Sherlock smiled. "None whatsoever. This is an extremely pleasant surprise, John. Well done," he praised, not the slightest hint of guilt along his features.

For being the cleverest man John knew, Sherlock had a knack for being the most empty-headed as well some times. And also, when he wasn't even trying, he could be the most genuinely humble man in all existence that would risk every rational hope in his head for the single, hopeless promise in his heart.


	29. Chapter 29

Commissioner Holmes refused a remote conference and in many ways John wasn't surprised. He wasn't playing along the way the the other man wanted him to, he wasn't relinquishing control over the situation into his hands or anyone's for that matter. John had taken the wheel back on Delphi, all but giving the most powerful man in the universe an order, and humility still had not put him back in his place with a summons to speak and follow. And John honestly didn't have any plans to. He was two years past fed up and not at all afraid to simply run and spend the rest of his life as a fugitive if needs be in order to maintain what he'd worked so hard to reclaim. But when his better half said to humor the giant, John was hard pressed to argue. Sherlock had the most to lose, really. What John lost would be by extension. If it was worth it to the hologram for them to dock on the Proteus at the behest of Commissioner Holmes, it was worth it to them all. But John would not step one foot off his vessel. Lestrade could handle the meeting in his stead.

Sherlock had all but rolled his eyes at the 'temper tantrum' he swore John made. It had been anything but. Lestrade was more than capable of handling their communications and--in all fairness--it was the very job Holmes had given him to do back in the early days of their conscripted task. Lestrade was all about decorum and he was the last honest captain the Black Manta had had before deciding on John after the fact. So Lestrade could go and chat about Earth, Moriarty, and Delphi all they wanted. And when they were done, they would come back to the ship and find the two of them ready and waiting to depart as had been his desire all along. A true temper tantrum would have involved John chaining himself to the hologram mechanics and bolting the door shut from inside screaming ' _no, no, you can't make me!_ '. This was a compromise if anything. After all, hanger bay or not, John was still more or less on the Proteus.

"My brother isn't a monster, John," Sherlock berated, choosing a fine time to defend the man they both had respected more than either of them liked. The warm mug of tea clasped between both his hands steamed but Sherlock himself did anything but. He was too calm for John's liking and relaxed beyond all common sense. The Commissioner didn't exactly value his life in the slightest nor had much consideration for John's either to be fair.

John smiled with contempt, his teeth exposed as though in a snarl though the sound he made was closer to a laugh. "He exiled me on Earth for two years, Sherlock; he was going to put me in prison! I'm not exactly inclined to agree with you on this one."

They sat on opposite sides at the table in the kitchen--their favorite place to sit and argue with its warm kettle and central view. They could see up through the cockpit from there and down towards the corridors of assorted rooms. It was nice to argue in private for once. The time spent yelling at him on Earth should have counted, John supposed, but it seemed like such a distant, unattached thing from his memories of the other. This was home, though. This was where things that mattered happened. And to see him drink from a cup and lick tea from his lips was strange enough to consider for now.

The arguing bit was still very much the same, though. Sherlock argued like a man to which all other opinions were beneath him, an insult to his senses and a joke offering nothing to amuse. Sometimes, _sometimes_ , he took time out from being right to explain why everyone else was wrong with some manner of care for other people's feelings but he only seemed marginally considerate of those as he continued to scowl and shake his head. "Mycroft was putting you someplace where he knew I would find you. Someplace he knew you would be safe," he continued, as though his brother had ever even bothered to so much as look at him let alone speak to him in the years that followed his death. Nostalgia was clouding his judgment. He hadn't a clue what his brother really was.

John knew. John knew all too well. And Sherlock was remiss to forgot so quickly the turmoil he'd put them through. "His men blew up my apartment and attempted to kill us both as we tried to escape," he reminded him, shaking a biscuit in his direction as he pulled it off the plate.

"They weren't my brother's men," Sherlock said.

John felt his mental engines winding down with the whine of power loss. No, no, but that didn't make any sense. Moriarty had _helped_ John get to the right places once on Delphi; he'd _wanted_ to know what Sherlock's plan had been and had all but made the very gamble possible by assisting in those simple ways. Moriarty would have been able to have just turned Sherlock off if he wanted to know which was the real John Watson escaping--the whole doppelganger trick would never have worked. So it had to be Holmes. There was no one else. At least, there was no one else he knew.

John dunked his biscuit in his tea, his eyes not leaving Sherlock's as he scowled across in confusion. "If they weren't your brothers, who were they then?"

"They work for a man named Charles Augustus Magnussen," Sherlock explained, fingers tapping against the warm ceramic. "You wouldn't have heard of him, he's a rather wealthy and influential businessman on Earth but most of his enterprise is in behind the scenes rather than a chair in the boardroom. He was of interest to Moriarty who was rather amused by his methods of blackmail and thus possession of other powerful people--I'm sure you can figure out motive from there considering Moriarty's shift towards affiliating himself with business executives in order to continue to undermine the government's authority. I was sent to London to meet with him and get a sense of his coercive abilities which are, to put it mildly, terrifying. He is the single most repulsive man I have ever had the misfortune of sitting down with. He was the one who told me you were in London, though. Somewhere down his sticky thread someone had made mention of a man barred from leaving the planet but who was free to work as a doctor and live without direct monitoring. He kept an eye on you because he knew something interesting would eventually happen if he did. But, of course, you got away and because I wore your face the whole time, he never was able to see who it was who came for you. Though I'm sure he has his suspicions."

Sherlock had a knack for speaking at length without pausing long enough for John to struggle through. Every sentence lead to its own question such as why anyone would be interested in John, though along the way there were some answers to points he'd never considered to ask. In the end, it boiled down to one thing, though, whether it made sense to him or not. "Is he a threat?"

"Magnussen?" Sherlock shrugged. "Perhaps. If Moriarty does indeed decide to work with him to gain a lobby of rich investors, then there is every reason to suspect we will have to deal with them both at some point. Though I hope it never comes to that."

John nodded, biting into his soggy log of chocolate. "What's so bad about Magnussen anyway?"

Sherlock didn't answer right away. Instead he looked at his hands, the tapping going still, his right-hand curling into a fist as his left one lifted the mug to his lips. "I don't care for his methods," he said, sipping his drink with downcast eyes. "James can do well enough without resorting to blackmail. His hologram technology should be more than enough to entice people to work in his favor."

"James," John repeated with prickles running down his spine.

"Moriarty, James, Jim," he listed, as though they all were one in the same, interchangeable, none more personal or intimate than any of the others.

Except they were. At least to normal people. And there was still a lot about watching the two of them that made John's skin crawl like maggots under his flesh.

John cleared his throat, looking down at his milky brew, fighting himself in a winless battle as he set the rest of his biscuit on the table beside. "Right," he started, then licked his lips. "Look, uh... I know two years is a long time. And.. well... uh--"

Footsteps in the hall gave him reason to pause. The figure that graced their doorway gave him reason to fear. Wearing a fine suit and looking completely out of place outside the pristine ambiance of the parliamentary vessel, stood Commissioner Holmes in none of his glory but possessing in his stance and stare every bit of his powerful ways. There was no entourage. John was more than a little surprised to see him there without Death in his shadow or a small armed guard escorting him for his safety among the docks. But there he was, just him, no one else, and he could not _possibly_ have come at a worse time.

"Do you mind?" John asked, fear tucked down below his rage. "We're kind of in the middle of something."

John's rage wasn't the only force to be reckoned with in the room, however. Ignoring Sherlock's presence entirely, Commissioner Holmes strode into the room with his brow heavy over his eyes, jaw set and shoulders back with the most impressionable glare to behold. He emanated with irritation bordering on plain pissed off. But still everything about him remained calm and foreboding like a hawk perched high on his branch. "You were summoned," he stated plainly. "You are not here to indulge in these pitiful power struggles, you are here to report to your recognized governmental authority and to remember your place."

"And where is my place, Mycroft? In prison? Trapped on Earth?"

"The fact that you think you did this on your own, that none of this was planned, is a new level of hubris even for you," the Commissioner argued.

John laughed to discard a scream. "I sure as fuck didn't do it with your help."

"You'd have destroyed yourself if left to your own devices."

"And the only reason you even pretended to care is because without me, you'd be fishing without a lure." John leaned heavy on his elbows, both arms pressed against the table top as he glared up at the well-polished man. He needed to not be there. John needed the Commissioner to not crowd him right now, to not corner him in another pointless contest of wills where John was forced not to back down out of spite more than sense. This was not going to go well and the fact that John knew it, knew he'd be the one to act a tit and make his own misfortune, was almost as irritating as the fact that pride wouldn't let him settle before that point. It was personal between John and the elder Holmes. This should have been about business, but everything about the smarmy jackass set John's furry in a spin. "I got Sherlock and we bested Moriarty. _We_ did," he emphasized, considering the man still had not so much as glanced at the hologram of his seated brother. Heartless. Cold as ice. Not even worth his time. "Now get the fuck off my ship." 

The Commissioner lingered, though, his presence heavy like a fog and denser than the mallet John felt sure the man would love to hit him with. "It doesn't have to be this way, John. In fact, I recommend you not take this path."

"I'm sure you do. And for the crew, I'd almost be inclined to agree. But right now I'm pretty well done dealing with egomaniacs. So you can handle our business with Lestrade or you can leave us all alone. Personally, I'm done," John said, feeling older and more tired with the words now said. "You owe me this much. Just leave us alone."

But the Commissioner sensed a victory. John couldn't keep the fight alive when insubordination meant imprisonment and violence meant death. He could not win in a one-on-one fight against his own government. Holmes knew that, bird of prey that he was. The further John sank, the straighter the man stood. And either John was going to bloody that hook-like nose of his again or the Commissioner really needed to walk away and concede to the simple request. Unlikely. John had his rage but Holmes had his pride. Immovable object, unstoppable force. It was never meant to end well.

"Mycroft," Sherlock called, his voice somewhat small in the wash of testosterone mucking up the place.

John looked between them, wondering if the man had the nerve to ignore him even after his attention had been begged and certain he could not keep his temper controlled if the bastard willfully denied him even now and to his face.

It seemed lucky that that should not be the case. The Commissioner did flinch slightly, his eyes stuttering in a sweep to the hologram's end of the table, returning to empty space in quick intervals as the muscles in his jaw worked. There was an almost visible debate going on in his head in the silence of their interlude. But he did at last turn, and with a heavy frown consider at last the figure of his dear, dead brother as he sat waiting in his seat at the table. "You still work for Moriarty," he said, obviously not missing the fact that his hands still held on to the mug or that his body cast a shadow in the same way as John's.

It wasn't 'hello' but it was... something. And it was worlds more than he'd given him after the many years before.

Sherlock smiled slightly, bolstering himself with forced indifference as he started in conversation. "I'm sure we both realized early on that Moriarty was something I would never be free of. But keeping close to ones' enemy has always been sound advise. And our futures will follow a very close path indeed."

"It's not over, then."

"No," Sherlock admitted. "But, with John's claim of a medical emergency, you now have the means to arrest control back from the business lobbyist as the government handles not only the evacuation but instills itself at the heart of any future enterprise. That should keep atrocities like what happened to the miners who became Simulants from happening again. And no doubt the current reign of Simulants will be making sure that is the case."

The fight had gone out of both of them. John was far too busy watching the brothers in quiet fascination, the way Mycroft wore pain in his shoulders rather than his face, the way he wilted and rebuilt himself in intervals between Sherlock's words. He still mourned him. He still missed him. In the pinch of wrinkles at his eyes, John saw what he'd allowed himself to forget in the flurry of events that had transpired. Moriarty killed Sherlock for no better reason than to get at Mycroft Holmes. Indirectly, Mycroft was responsible for his beloved brother's death. The lines of his jaw and pull of tendons in his neck said he felt it still as though it were fresh. Sherlock's new existence was born from a desire to mock and goad him. Resistance brought him this. Moriarty had made it personal.

It was so easy to forget.

"There's been some backlash, obviously," Holmes quickly explained, continuing on as though this was normal business to contemplate and that the machismo before had never been. "Compliance will take some measure of military intervention, but we'll have the outer solar system empty within the month. Quarantine has been posted at a minimum of three years but appeals are pending. It's not over, but it's a start."

Sherlock nodded, his expression still calm and pleased. "You're certain to have your hands full. And in the meantime, John and I will be acting on our own reconnaissance. Moriarty is still out there and even where he is not, there is plenty for us to investigate and uncover. Should our information or actions cross purposes with your own interests, we'll of course be in contact. Otherwise, I believe the Black Manta will simply continue to act in the galaxy's best interests."

If John had said it, there would have been laughter. When John had tried to make a similar point, they had been seconds from an altercation. But when Sherlock said it, there was only room for a nod from the official and a thick swallow as he breathed in deep. "Given the circumstances, I think that would be best," he agreed, then looked down at the watch on his wrist. Regardless of what it said, John felt sure he'd still have left. The Black Manta was too small to avoid unpleasant things like memories or ghosts of the living. He nodded to both of them, his eyes lingering on Sherlock before quickly walking away. "You're so very like my brother," he voiced near a whisper, passing from their kitchen at a slow, funereal march.

John watched a heavy frown once again form on the hologram's ageless face. "If only you were more like mine."


	30. Chapter 30

Sherlock did not have a private bedroom. He wouldn't have been able to do anything in one except stand around and look at things while being out of other's sight and the Black Manta wasn't really big enough for such vanity concessions. Before. It wasn't a matter of vanity now. The limiting factors between the living and the dead were all but nonexistent now, and whether he needed sleep or not, Sherlock was within his right to request private quarters which, if they moved a few bits of storage around, might be possible. He didn't, of course. John wondered if the thought had even occurred to him. Instead, the hologram made his way to John's room and inside made himself as comfortable as ever. It was what they were used to. It was what was most familiar. And it was nice to fall back into step with the way things used to be. 

Sitting on his bed, watching Sherlock go through John's own things for something loose to wear, John couldn't keep his mind from wandering back to the distant past where he and a hologram projected from a band at his throat bickered about their shared living space and the rights of the dead brought back through light. It had been extremely important once upon a time that Sherlock have his own things even if he could not use them. Ownership and property made him less of a possession himself, reaffirming his status as human even against harsh opposition. On the Black Manta, with the exception of Michael, Sherlock was treated like a human regardless and so didn't act out like entitled diva when private space was reserved for the living crew. It made for an interesting trend to see him now, not even concerned about the fact that he had no clothes outside those projected on him, and willing without complaint to put on John's things in view of his lack. The more he had, the less it seemed he needed. The only constant, the only thing they'd always had whether a comfort or a pain, reserved in memory or right before their eyes, was each other. And every step ahead, from the tiny prison cell with its single bed to the captain's quarters on a galactic cruiser, they'd never accepted separation as an option for either life. 

And neither had they spoken out on that cardinal sin that would be pointing out the motivations behind that desire to remain always at each other's side.

John watched as Sherlock scowled at handfuls of boxer shorts as he pillaged through drawers for something to wear, himself having become instantly naked with the day's clothes removed without the need for undressing. It was far from the first time John had seen him naked. Sherlock had always been something of a work of art; something to observe and appreciate but roped off and unavailable to touch. He reminded John of a Renaissance sculpture with a head of curls and smooth, alabaster skin, not muscled but lithe and mysteriously fey. It had never been a lustful stare whether his eyes followed the sensuous curve of the hologram's ass or considered the proportionate elegance of his bits on the other side. One didn't lust for art, even if art could spark arousal. But Sherlock wasn't simply art anymore. That was definitely going to take some getting used to. That and a lot of other things that John could not help but wonder.

What had it been like the first time Sherlock touched himself in his new hologram body? John had seen the first few coltish minutes of him rediscovering what a velour chair felt like and the ability to feel at all. What had it been like to taste chocolate again? To stand beneath a shower? What had those days and weeks of rediscovery been like in the years before? And had Sherlock alone been party to such exploration or had another been there to guide him through?

John didn't have a problem admitting he was jealous. Why shouldn't he be? The images in his head of the man he loved left both vulnerable and overwhelmed were almost enough by themselves to drive him mad. He did not want Moriarty to have been there. He didn't want _James_ to have been there at all let alone have been first. And if he had been? ....

....

... whatever went on between Moriarty and Sherlock had nothing to do with Sherlock and John. He could make it about himself if he wanted to, feel betrayed or angry and make up a thousand excuses for himself to be justified. But it had nothing to do with him and everything to do with Sherlock's life and situation. Two years was a long time. And in the end, Sherlock was there with John and wanted to be there wholeheartedly. If he wanted to share the events of that time with John, he would. But John wouldn't ask. Because it didn't change anything, but he might just be stupid enough to let it. Sherlock knew best and ignorance was often John's best friend. So he wouldn't ask. Only a fool would ask. And in his head he could simply hold on to the suspicions till reality proved he shouldn't care. It was in the past now one way or another. And John's future looked beautiful in flannel boxer shorts and a white Tee.

"Sherlock?" John called, finding the other man's attention in a mirror as he smoothed out the wrinkled shirt, pressing it flat against his chest only to watch it crinkle after each pass.

"Yes, John?"

"I love you."

Sherlock paused only for a moment, looking back at John through the reflective surface with blank surprise followed by a slow, tired smile. "I know," he replied, the smile falling all the more sweetly in the gentle longing of his eyes. He went back to fussing over the messy state of John's old things, his cheeks lightly colored and the smile still lingering in the corners of his lips.

"Sherlock?"

"I love you too, John."

"Yeah," John nodded, leaning back against his palms. "But that's not what I was going to ask you."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, giving up on the shirt, and crossed quietly over to the bed. "Alright. Ask away," he said, standing somewhat awkwardly in front of him, disproportionately huge while John remained sitting but still somewhat small with his reluctance showing through.

John smiled at him, not wanting to be too serious, never much good at doing these things the traditional way. "Will you be mine?" he asked, breaking every cardinal sin they'd ever agreed upon unspoken.

Sherlock all but laughed at him, his fingers carding through John's hair. "I always have been, John. Don't be stupid. Now grab the book and let's start again from the beginning. Much better than trying to remember where we left off."

Ignoring the book and grabbing Sherlock instead, John couldn't agree more with that statement.


End file.
